Even the Stars can be Moved
by Vasilisa23
Summary: First of the series: when Harry disappears, Dumbledore lets Hermione in on a secret he'd held onto for decades, a secret whose ending is not yet clear. Can Hermione do what is needed for Harry to complete the prophesy? TR/Hr.
1. Chapter 1

BE WARNED, NEW READERS!

The warning that used to be here has not been applicable for a little while now. Heh. Sorry!

Chapter 1

Catalysts

10

Hermione

When Hermione Granger killed Bellatrix LeStrange, she learned that a great and terrible person can indeed be overcome by one who is relatively unskilled and inexperienced. It was a night late in July; later she realized that it had been Harry's birthday. And on that July night she found the secret understanding that had haunted Harry's eyes since late in first year. A formidable person, a person who has spent years preparing and protecting themselves, can never prepare for every circumstance. There is always a circumstance that can overcome even the greatest and most skilled, and that circumstance does not require an equal opponent. That circumstance does not even require that opponent to recognize it as a circumstance. Sometimes the circumstance guides and shapes the opponent so that the downfall may have very little indeed to do with her. Where Harry had learned this lesson intuitively, six times so far, Hermione learned this lesson irreperably, since she was the first of the Trio to use the killing curse.

On that July night, Hermione sat in the same position on her living room floor, listening to the drone of cicadas until they disappeared sometime during the morning. She sat in the middle of three bodies. Her mother's lay the most to the east, which Hermione remembered because when the sun rose it peeled over her mother's face first, scrunched in on itself like a child's face in the middle of a nightmare. Hermione knew what hers would be, forever after that. It would be a hot night so humid it made her feel like she was moving underwater. She would be wet from a midnight swim; she had been unable to swim very far into the pond because she had been afraid of what she couldn't see in the water. She would hear what sounded like a baby's cry. There was every reason to think it was a baby's cry; her neighbors had just had one. It would turn, so slowly she almost didn't realize it, into an adult's cry, a woman's cry, a cry of pain. Funny how a child's meaningless cry and a howl of pain were indistinguishable. She would feel her heart disappear into her stomach, she would see her house, she would see that there was no Dark Mark above it yet, but she would know anyway. It would not be like one of those dreams where despite your fear you are rooted to the ground. If only it were one of those dreams. If only she had not been able to walk to her house, if only she had not had the misplaced presence of mind to open the ajar back door as quietly as possible, if only she had not seen a body on the floor, and a body writhing halfway to the floor, and a body standing over it, saying "Crucio". If only there were one spell she couldn't do, if only it was Avada Kedaveda. If only she had used Immobulus, or Petrificus Totalus. But Bellatrix had then said "Avada Kedaveda", and started to turn, and Hermione couldn't think of anything to do but echo those same words and mean it.

And after that she sat next to her mother and father and waited for the Aurors, listening to the unending drone of the cicadas.

9

Tom

Although Tom Marvolo Riddle publicly eschewed emotion, in truth his life was comprised of wave after wave of justified and growing anger. Between wandless summers at the Home for Boys ("Or you'll do what, you pale prat?"), a mother so long gone he didn't even know what her face looked like ("You don't even have a picture of her?), and a family that would have nothing to do with him ("Mr. Riddle, what do you know of the Marvolo line?") and the daily battle that it was to simply exist in Slytherin ("Riddle? What kind of a plebe name is that?"), he had by now watched wave after wave crest, unable to do anything about it, powerless to change his position or to avenge the wrongs that piled up at his feet. Instead he spent as much time as possible in the library, compiling information in the hopes that it would enable him one day to be the master of that overwhelming force known as fate. He held onto anger many times, for many reasons, only to realize there was nothing to be done, that he would simply have to move on, that one day his life would be worth this suffering. He did not notice the quiet anger that did not seep out, that cared less and less who it was that had affronted or wronged him. Perhaps he noticed that it held on longer and longer, but it did not worry him if he did. One day he would keep his anger, and revenge himself upon the one who inflicted it, and in doing so let out all the hurt and fear and pain that had accumulated over the years like a malignant cancer.

When Pendrake Malfoy betrayed him, he knew the time had come where there was no other way than to put his anger to use. For years, Tom had hidden the fact that he was a Marvolo from his fellow Slytherins. The Marvolo line was an old pureblood line, nearly dead. He was the last one but for a past his prime wizard who'd shown no signs of marrying and producing an heir. It would have made his life far easier to be a Marvolo; as it was he hid his half-blood nature from his fellow Slytherins by allowing them to think him a plebe, a pureblooded but unremarkable family, one whose name no one would bother to recognize. The thing was, the last Marvolo had disinherited him at birth, and he knew that if he allowed his housemates to know that he was of the family, they would know that the family wouldn't have him. The disinheritance on its own would be bad enough, but the reason for the disinheritance could quite easily be fatal. Tom was the first half-blood to be sorted into Slytherin in a century. Ironic that the last of Salazar Slytherin's descendants should be a half blood, that the only hope there was of passing on the traits peculiar to that line resided in what they condemned. He had learned about his link to Salazar the past year, his fourth year. It explained the parseltongue, anyway. However, this rather illustrious knowledge had to be kept inside, under lock and key, because the other half of what Tom was, was a victim of the prejudices set into motion by the other half. So it was that Tom had spent four years at Hogwarts the internal embodiment of the wizarding world's greatest war, the war that had been going on under Grindenwald, the war that looked never to end.

And, on the third day of his fifth year, his internal war became external. Tom entered the Slytherin dungeons to see every bulletin board plastered with copies of the official document that Crispin Marvolo had signed to legally extricate him from the family. Tom hadn't even seen the document himself. It was written in quite large letters. They were horribly easy to read for the crowd gathered around them. When Tom approached one group to see what the fuss was, it created a stir of faces that whispered at his approach. He saw his name first, below the title, "The Ministry of Magic recognizes that the Undersigned had been Officially Disinherited, by order of Provision 23A." Below that was about a paragraph of writing detailing the specifics, such as he was not allowed to contact said family and was allowed no part of the estate, or entitled to any recognition that may follow from use of the family name, and of course, that Crispin Marvolo had undetaken the proceedings because the undersigned was a half-blood. The repercussions were clear to even those Slytherins with the comprehension of a walnut. His standing in the house, as an independent plebian, had changed within the space of a day to Blight of the Slytherin House. Even people who he exchanged pleasantries with (and he had decided long ago only to exchange pleasantries with them), were careful not to look him in the eye.

Tom knew that the document resided in a locked safe that he legally had no access to deep in the halls of the Office of Official Records and Statistics, which was presided over by Loudon Malfoy. He was also quite aware that Pendrake Malfoy was one of the few Slytherins who was not crowded around the blasted bulletin boards, and that he was the only Slytherin who did not avoid his eye. No, Pendrake looked him quite steadily in the eye as Tom strode to his dormitory, a faint smirk overlaying his pale features. As Tom's heart pounded in his ears, sending wave after wave of heat surging through his body, Tom decided that he was not going to let go of this new anger until he had had his revenge on the entire bloody Malfoy line.

8

Hermione

"Name."

"Hermione Granger."

"Age."

"Seventeen."

"Occupation."

"Student."

The Auror stated the questions without sympathy or emotion. He didn't look her in the eye. Before them was a roll of parchment on which a quill automatically and independently transcribed their conversation.

"Please describe in your own words the events of the night of July the 24th and the morning of July the 25th."

In her own words. What other words were there? "I... well, I had gone out for a swim. I couldn't sleep because it was so hot, and the air conditioning-- it's the Muggle version of a cooling charm-- was broken, so... And then I came back. I could hear screaming in the house. So I thought, I mean, I knew, that a Death Eater was in the house."

"What led you to this conclusion?"

"Well, I suppose that I've always known it was a possibility. I'm Muggleborn. Lucius Malfoy first pointed it out to me in my second year. And his son... And he's a Death Eater. Lucius, I mean. He knows I know Harry Potter. And I've helped him. And Voldemort--" Merlin, a shudder from an _Auror. _Things were dire indeed. "Well, they know I've helped him. So of the potential victims, I suppose I'm on a rather short list." She couldn't believe she'd just been asked to justify her immediate suspicions. After all, she had been _right_."

"Please return to the events, Miss."

"Right. I came in through the back door-- I get to the pond from a trail around the back, so I was nearer to the back door, you see. By then I knew-- who... the screams were from."

"Who?"

"My mother," she whispered. This couldn't be the most psychologically healthy way to come to terms with the deaths of your parents. "She- Bellatrix LeStrange, that is, was torturing her."

"How so?"

How else do Death Eaters torture? "With Crucio." You utter dolt. Her voice broke on her words, but she was determined not to cry. She could cry after this. In Azkaban, most likely.

"Do you need a moment?"

"No. I'm fine. I need to finish more than anything. So it was Crucio, and then Avada Kedavada, from Bellatrix, and then she started to turn towards me, and I just didn't have time to think, and she would have killed me I'm sure-"

"Can you explain why you didn't attempt to immobilize her or leave the scene?"

"Leave the scene? That-- she would have killed me, I was in a Muggle neighborhood. No one could have helped me. No one did help me. As for the other, it was just-- there was no time to think..."

"Have you ever used the Killing Curse before?"

Hermione flinched. "Of course not."

"Yet, on your first try, you performed it successfully?"

"So it would seem."

"Let it be noted that the suspect had the presence of mind to perform an adult-level spell successfully on her first try but did not have the presence of mind to think of another spell."

"What?"

Silence. She thought of Bellatrix's picture in Kreacher's hovel.

"I-- Now hang on, I... I'm rather good at spells, first of all, so it's not as though it required the sort of presence of mind it would take Longbottom to successfully brew-- well, anything, and-- My parents are dead! Dead, and tortured! How are your parents? How would you react to find them dead and their faces-- Did you see their faces? A bit worse off than LeStrange, I assure you, for while I did kill in self-defense and reprisal, I didn't torture-- do you know what Crucio does? I'm not-- I'm not a bad person. Please. I don't want to be. I just want to go back--"

"You can't go back, Miss Granger. You can't change a thing. That is why we have laws in place to punish actions such as murder, no matter what the circumstances of the murder. Because those actions cannot be taken back."

Another voice came, then, a familiar and more welcome voice. "Quite right, Mr. Jarvey, quite right. But I assure you that Miss Granger is fully aware of the permanence of death." Hermione turned to the voice. Professor Dumbledore. She hadn't even heard the door open. But then, she felt no relief. She hadn't felt much of anything since the previous night, not fear when the Aurors showed up at last and put her into custody, nor exhaustion for not sleeping a wink since everything. The only thing that had escaped her at all was a rising anger and irritation at Mr. Jarvey throughout the interview and the inescapable suspicion that she had lost control of every ideal she held to become someone much different than the person who had left last night for a midnight swim. "If I may," said Dumbledore, gesturing vaguely. Apparently Mr. Jarvey knew what he was on about since he put a Finite Incantatem on the quill and rose from his chair.

"Right then," said Mr. Jarvey as he left. "I don't think I need anything more from Miss Granger."

The calmness on Dumbledore's face fell a little when Mr. Jarvey left. He sat heavily in the chair across from her, her confession in between them. "Miss Granger..." He took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. "I cannot begin to tell you how terribly terribly sorry I am..." He replaced them. "For the loss of your parents, of course, but also that you were put in a situation that has led-" At this, he waved his hand around the room, walls crackling with wards- "to your current predicament. I have been prepared since Voldemort's return to hear that some Muggleborn student's family may be put in danger... Yours in particular, if truth be told. I have been prepared to prevent such an occurrence. However, from what I understand of the situation, Bellatrix LeStrange went to your house o her own accord, so it was not possible for Professor Snape to inform me. Please, Miss Granger, forgive me."

What was right, and what was easy. She had so taken those words to heart. "Professor Dumbledore?" she asked.

"Yes, Miss Granger."

"I-- Is this... I mean, did I do what was..." Right, or easy? But the answer was obvious. She had done what was easy. And Dumbledore was giving her a penetrating look now. She had a sudden suspicion that there was something he wasn't telling her, something he was not going to tell her. "I'm a murderer," she whispered.

He pressed his lips together. "You are a remarkable girl, Hermione. You have shown time and time again that you are willing to stand up for what you believe, and you have shown ingenuity in so doing. You have gone to great lengths to accomplish what is right. And you have shown a better sense of what is right and wrong than even the best of your peers."

A tear made its way down her face. She felt as though he was delivering a requiem for who she had been.

"Often remarkable people are made to pay for those qualities that make them so. That is what has happened to you. Yes, you have taken a life. The circumstances are such that it is eminently understandable. And, in a way, you have struck a blow for the side of the Light. But it is a weight, one that I know you will never shirk to carry. And I am grateful that it weighs upon you as heavily as it does. Perhaps I am grateful that you know the weight already, considering what you... inevitably face." Here again, that penetrating look. "Also, you have struck a blow against yourself. You have taken away one of Voldemorts more treasured followers. He knows your name now. Of that I have no doubt. You are now facing great danger."

Was it Gryffindor courage or despair that kept her from caring?

"I suppose it'll be really easy to get to me in Azkaban."

"Miss Granger, you are not going to Azkaban." His voice was strong, nearly angry. "I am taking you back to Hogwarts. It is the only place where you are safe from Voldemort. There will be a trial, of course. But I am quite sure there will be only reasonable repercussions. Moody is passing the right for Aurors to kill in the line of duty this fall. In the meantime, you will be in my custody."

She heartened a bit at this.

"When do we go?"

"As soon as you would like to leave, Miss Granger."

7

Tom

It seemed that anger did not want Tom to leave it either, for within a week of Pendrake Malfoy's little stunt, Tom believed he found the key to his revenge. There was, in the Library, a little known corner tucked away to the left of the Restricted Section. You could only access it if you were somehow descended from one of the founders, as Tom was. He was only able to pull Salazar Slytherin's books from the shelves. No spell yet had managed to free any of the other volumes. He had been particularly interested in a few of Ravenclaw's selection of books. Still, Slytherin had a vast array of books that existed nowhere else on earth. Tom spent much of his time there.

He had once read a story, or perhaps he had heard of it-- it was so far back he didn't remember the source, but it had always stuck with him. It was the story of a violinist and alchemist who found that the key to alchemy lay in an obscure note that one could only hit if they succumbed to a sort of chaotic wandering and pure faith. Muggle nonsense, of course; that obscure note was simple magical ability. However, the notion of chaos and faith had always held a sort of appeal to him, and Tom used it as a guiding precept now. He spent much of the first few days after the debacle avoiding hexes waiting outside and inside of his dormitory, in the halls, and in his food. He tried very hard to think of it as yet another enlightening sort of experience; after all, no one had gotten through his defenses yet. The rest of his time he spent in his nook pulling books from the shelves and opening them to random passages, succumbing to chaotic wandering and sending old Salazar as pure a faith as he could muster. Which wasn't very pure, to be sure. But Tom felt that it was the sort of faith that Salazar would like, anyway.

He was proved right when he pulled a book called Invisible Rooms of the Wizarding World and found, on page 23, a description of something called the Chamber of Secrets. A place hidden somewhere inside Hogwarts. A place that could only be opened by the heir of Slytherin. A place whose location sprung to his head unbidden, just as Athena had sprung to life in Zeus's head. Clearly, it had been waiting for him.

Tom hurriedly readied his things and replaced the book. It was dinner. He had avoided it since he had detected various poisons in every single piece of food he brought to his plate during lunch. He had enchanted a ring to warm against his finger if it detected a poison, so no one had managed to get him to ingest anything foul, but it was quite disheartening to reach for food only to have to leave it languishing on his plate. He hadn't even drank anything. Slytherin spitefulness had turned out to be a lucky thing, however, since he now had a window of time in which to go to the girl's lavatory, where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was to be found. He made the mistake of traveling up a particularly fickle staircase and ended up having to backtrack, but got to the lavatory soon enough, and found it empty to boot. The sinks stood in the dead center of the room, beckoning to them. As he drew nearer he noticed the snakes inscribed on the faucets. Why no one had noticed them before, he did not know. Foolish of them, really. He told them to open, unconsciously reverting to parseltongue.

"Open," he said. With a bone-rattling clank and a surge of magic, the sinks obeyed and revealed to him a long, slimy tunnel. Well, this looked to be messy. But, he supposed, revenge always was. He took off his robes, folded them and placed them in his satchel so that he could put them back on to hide whatever state his clothing may end up in. Then he stepped over the edge and let the darkness below guide him.

6

Hermione

Hogwarts was strange in the summer. It had been empty enough the winter she spent there, but she'd had Harry and Ron. Well, for the first bit of the winter hols, anyway. It had been terribly lonely when they hadn't been speaking, and no amount of studying had distracted her, but still. She could feel them. Now, making her way through the empty corridors to Gryffindor Tower alone, Hogwarts felt unreal. Like some abstract painting of Hogwarts. Later, Hermione would come to find that everything would feel like that-- Hogsmeade, the Weasleys, school, studying. Very little in her would would feel the same again ever again.

But Hermione wasn't entirely alone, and there were some things that would always feel the same. Well, one thing. And he was sitting in his favorite squashy couch in the Gryffindor common room, playing a game of Wizard's Chess against himself. He looked about as bleak as she felt.

"Harry," she whispered, and he looked up. It was a long look between them. She knew that he knew what had happened. And she realized now that she understood what had happened to Harry. Harry had been so distant since Sirius died, but in that first meeting, the distance between them vanished. He smiled; she hadn't seen him smiling like that since fifth year. He stood, she ran, and she fell into his arms and sobbed her heart out. They stood like that for a long time, and then he walked her to a couch and sat her down, gingerly patting her head as her sobs died out. Once they were gone, the exhaustion came, and she breathed against Harry's shoulder deeper and deeper until she was asleep on his shoulder.

She woke up sometime later that night. Harry was asleep. She was still resting on his shoulder. She had always felt more comfortable around Harry than Ron. Of course, that was because her and Harry's friendly hugs and kisses meant nothing; Harry knew, as she did, that Hermione was Ron's. It hadn't happened between them yet. She had decided long ago to wait for him to make a move. He'd been unwilling for a little while to admit to himself what his jealousy over Viktor Krum meant. Sometime last year she'd seen that he finally realized what it was between them, that it was inevitable, that they were destined. Still, he didn't make a move. She knew he was afraid. The fool. As though she would ever deny him. And she'd decided that it couldn't happen until he realized this, that she was his. Things would be incomplete between them until there was no fear.

But, she realized, things were different now. Everything was different. If Ron had been afraid before, he'd be doubly so now. Merlin, the boy fell apart whenever she cried. He'd have no idea what to do about this. Besides making her tea, perhaps, she thought ruefully, remembering that time in Hagrid's hut.

And again, her stomach dropped and her body closed in on her and she was gasping for air as she realized anew that she was a murderer. Nothing between her and the Death Eaters now. Of course, she realized this wasn't strictly true, as she didn't exult in it, or in anyone else's pain. But still. She put her head in her hands and wished she was still asleep. Maybe if she wished hard enough...

Harry's hand was on her back, making a rough circle. "All right, 'Mione?"

She laughed bitterly, and strangely enough, he laughed too.

"Right stupid question, sorry."

"Oh, Harry... it's not my parents, it's that..." She drew a sort of hiccupping sigh. "I'm a murderer." And she was crying again. Same old Hermione.

He was silent. Then he took her chin in his hands and made her face him. "Listen to me, Hermione. You had no choice. You need to accept that. You are not the same as them. You did what you needed to do, and there are people who are going to live now, because of what you've done. No matter what you might think of it." His face was hard, and Hermione knew he was talking as much about the Prophecy as anything else. He dropped his hands and looked at the ground "And I think you know well enough how glad I am you did it."

"But Harry-"

"No. There's other things, Hermione, besides just right and wrong. There are things you have to do, wrongs that make things right."

She couldn't, didn't want to argue with that. For Harry's sake. Given what he would someday have to do. "Things aren't right, though, Harry. I may have-- well, she may be gone, but nothing's changed. It hasn't made things better."

"No," he answered, "But they will be."

5

Tom

The ground was littered with bones. Mostly, they were small bones. Hundreds of generations of rats, it looked like. Tom muttered "Lumos", and he saw the first human skeleton lying on the floor, shaded blue by the light. He still didn't know what secret it was that the chamber possessed. He shivered as he thought of Pendrake Malfoy's skeleton lying on the Chamber floor. He walked down the tunnel, wondering if he could bring himself to do it, cursing himself for not knowing. But he could imagine little satisfaction in his death. It would be better to see Pendrake squirm.

The tunnel opened up into a cavernous room, wet and rotting with a millenium's worth of age. It was still impressive, ornate even, one long path lined by serpentine statues. A watery, gray light from an indeterminate source shivered in the air. This room stank of a cold and horrible greatness. Tom had always known that terrible things were required to overcome fate, but standing in this room brought the truth home to him in such a way that he could feel it in his bones. Ignorant of what lay waiting for him in this room, he also came to understand that he must prove himself to earn this greatness. He wasn't afraid; the worst that could come of it was dying, which seemed a better and better option than a life lived like a ship tossed about by a storm. He was quite capable of striving, and of dispassionately seeing how far his grasp extended. He walked on, and came to a large, cement wall carved with serpents. After a time, he recognized it for what it was; a holding pen.

"Open," he said again; again in parseltongue. He would see if he was worthy. That was all there was to it. And the cage opened. A sound came, or rather, it slithered. Of course. What else could be waiting here but a snake? Before he could even see it, Tom found his mind wandering towards it, feeling for the shape of its consciousness with his mind. Possession was another ability that marked the line of Slytherin. It was how Salazar had made his escape from the rest of the founders, after all.

It was a basilisk. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, remembering what he'd read about them. He heard its body drop to the floor and curl towards him. It was his, to do with as he wanted. He wondered... Tom had found, early on in Slytherin when Earl Rosier had slipped Hydra poison in his drink (it made the victim prout two extra heads), that he was immune to the poisons of snakes. Oddly enough, this wasn't a characteristic of the Slytherin line. It was an evolution. But if he was immune to the poison, perhaps he would be immune to the fatal stare of the basilisk.

The worst that came of striving, after all, was only death.

Tom opened his eyes.

4

Hermione

Hermione and Harry never left each other's company in those first few days back at Hogwarts. It turned out that Harry hadn't been able to stand it at the Dursleys, and had written to Dumbledore out of desperation. Dumbledore had insisted that Harry finish the month out at the Dursleys, for his own safety, and given his approval to let Harry go to the Weasleys in August. Once they had heard about what happened to the Grangers, and once Harry found out that she was going to Hogwarts, he'd volunteered to go there himself. Dumbledore had let him escape a few days early. Ron was coming in a few days, after the tumult surrounding Bill and Fleur's wedding had died down.

Hermione was under no circumstance to leave Hogwarts grounds. She wouldn't be allowed into Hogsmeade this year, as a percautionary measure. Neither would Harry. She wasn't sure if she cared yet. For now, all she needed was Harry. They talked freely about her parents and Sirius, respectively, exchanging all their memories and stories. Hermione knew most of the things about Sirius, but she let Harry tell her anyway. There still a few nuggets in there that she hadn't heard about.

"I tell you, he was a right berk," Harry was saying as they walked the perimeter of the forest, without a trace of bitterness in his voice. "I still wonder whether Dad actually did take off Snape's underwear."

"Maybe you should ask," Hermione suggested innocently. He grinned, quickly. Hermione hadn't quite forgiven the Professor for not letting her undertake a special project to work on improvements to Wolfsbane Potion. She was totally unfazed by his evilness to her, by now, but for goodness' sake, Lupin deserved better.

Harry looked at the Forest keenly for a moment. "Fancy a visit to Grawp?" Hagrid was away on another expedition to garner support from the giants. Grawp had improved a lot by now. Dumbledore had told Hagrid about a cave hidden to the northeast, and Grawp had learned enough manners and English to keep him out of, well, severe trouble. He liked Hermione the best of the trio, unfortunately. He still grabbed for her every now and again, but she had learned to dodge him by running, climbing, and levitating. A good conjunctivitus curse in the eye didn't hurt when he was being unreasonable. He never seemed to hold it against her. And it had become a sort of protection from the centaurs for the three of them, although Hermione had not seen one of them since that day she'd led Umbridge into the forest. This was mostly due to the fact that she'd spent much of her sixth year working on a corollary to the Marauder's Map, the Defense Diagram. She'd had the idea over the previous summer, and when she'd joined the Weasleys at Grimmauld Place she'd picked Lupin's brain so she could think of how to go about it. Then she, Harry, and Ron had gone on prolonged trips into the Forest with Hagrid in order to map it, enchanting the map to keep track of the various creatures it contained. She'd decided it would be vital should Voldemort find a way to attack the school.

"Why not?" she shrugged, and pulled out the D.D. The centaurs were mainly to the southwest, with a few stragglers; Aragog was in the central part of the forest, sleeping; the unicorns were by the spring, and the Thestrals (she shivered, knowing that now she'd find out what they looked like), were near Hagrid's hut. They could see Grawp. He was outside of his cave. They tucked their pants into their socks, something they'd learned to do after Ron fell sick after brushing against a patch of blithering baptisia. It would be a jaunt through the trail Hagrid had long since established to Grawp's cave, so Hermione didn't find it necessary to get the satchel of antidotes she'd been developing the past year. At night they always wore their invisibility cloaks and carried the antidotes on them. They were too tall by now to crouch under Harry's, and luckily Ron had been given one for Christmas by Fred and George. Not to be left out, Hermione had spent the Galleon's she'd been saving over the years on her own. But they didn't need them now.

A year spent walking in the Forbidden Forest had sharpened all of the Trio's senses so that they knew what to look out for, and where to run if necessary. They needed precautionary measures less and less, and Hagrid less and less. Walking the trail to Grawp's place in broad daylight required little else but the map. Hermione was used to the forest enough to appreciate its encironment. She'd always been content in a forest setting. The fresh smell always soothed her, and between the dense presence of forest life on the one hand and Harry's presence on the other, Hermione was as content as she had been for days. They walked down the path in relative silence, making occasional conversation, and let themselves be suspended in the belief that things promised to be normal for a little while at least.

3

Tom

When the attacks started, Tom didn't understand at first what had happened. He wanted the basilisk to attack Pendrake Malfoy, not Astor Pallas or Tiberius Winningham or Jordan Knightly's toad. He could feel the basilisk's consciousness, could connect with it, could feel it, and the thoughts it had felt like his own. But it would not do what he wanted it to do.

Pendrake Malfoy was totally unmoved by the petrifications. He had some sort of idea that the attacks were solely against Mudbloods. Tom had sent the basilisk out three times, each time when he knew Pendrake to be alone and unguarded. Each time, the basilisk had missed its target. It hadn't even managed to kill any of its victims, a rather astounding brush of luck for them. These days Tom was almost angry enough not to be relieved that there wasn't yet blood on his hands. His life had become a daily war, a constant defense against hexes and poisons. The outright antipathy from his house was rather grating as well. But the pity from the other houses, who of course would know that he was a halfblood, was almost worse. He hadn't been paired up with his fellow Slytherin prefect for months now, and he had to endure thoughtful, earnest attempts at conversation from that fool Hufflepuff Sue Llewellyn. The other week he had seen that awkward buffoon Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest, walking, of all things, an oversized spider, on a leash. When Tom had come up to dock points, Hagrid had thought he'd come to talk, or for pity, or something that caused him to introduce Tom to the spider, who he was keeping as a pet. Tom had been so fed up he'd simply whirled around and gone back to the library, where he'd had to immobilize a bucket of worms that Tristram Rogers had attempted to empty over his head.

The anger came in wave after wave, guiding all that he did, giving him some kind of preternatural focus. He absorbed everything from class, and many things outside of class, soaking up everything in case it might come in handy. And the worst part of it was that Pendrake kept himself completely seperate from it all. He didn't engage in any of the pranks and attempts at violence. He simply held himself aloof and smug, as though he'd had nothing to do with it and was slightly amused by the proceedings.

It wasn't until Myrtle McAffrey died that he understood what had happened. Standing in the hall waiting for her body to be brought out, he had looked inside of himself and found that secret component of his anger, the part that was directed at everything and anything. The basilisk had responded to his anger, but it had made it its own, and shaped it to fit the agenda that had been lying dormant in its head since the days of Salazar Slytherin. Tom thought "Kill." The Basilisk thought "Kill All Mudbloods." And now he was facing that wretched orphanage again. He had one hell of a mess to clean up. Then, most conveniently, he thought of Hagrid.

2

Hermione

"You're a little scary sometimes, you know that? Brilliant, but scary."

How scary was she now? Hermione had barely talked to Harry at all the day before Ron was due to arrive. Merlin knew she was scared. Positively terrified. She had no idea what she'd say to Ron. If he'd even say anything to her. And here she was, sitting on a couch in the common room with her legs crossed, her foot twitching a mile a minute, unable to respond to any of Harry's attempts at light conversation.Maybe she should read a book. But if she actually got up to get a book, she might just faint. Any sort of movement now did not seem like a good idea. Neither did anything out of the usual. So she let out a startled gasp when Harry grabbed her hand.

"Calm down, Hermione. I don't see what you've got to be worried about."

She turned to him, wide eyed. "What if he hates me?" she breathed.

Harry let out a good-natured chuckle. It didn't amuse her in the least. "Hermione, the last letter I got from Ron was three feet long. From Ron! And I don't think there was a sentence in there that didn't have to do with you."

"He didn't write me."

"He feels like he always says the wrong thing around you anyway. He thinks he'll break you."

"He might."

Harry gave her hand another squeeze. "No he won't." He let go of her hand and looked thoughtfully at the fireplace. "He loves you, you know."

It was the first time anyone had every said anything about it outright. Besides her extremely secret conversations with Ginny, of course. Ginny had written to tell her that she wanted to come, but that she thought it would be best if Hermione had time with her boys first. Her boys. Her rocks. She felt a little better.

And then the entrance swung open and Ron was there. He walked in a bit overconfidently, his bags trailing behind him. "Oi, you lot, don't tell me it's been this boring without me." He was looking right at Hermione. Harry had already stood up and was clapping Ron on the back, but Hermione couldn't move. He didn't turn his eyes away. She wished he would. She wished he wouldn't.

_"You're a little scary sometimes." _Why couldn't she stop thinking of that? She'd gotten over him calling her a nightmare, and giving her the silent treatment over the winter break, and his baiting of her at the Yule ball. Why did those words, of all words, rankle?

He was standing above her, tall and deep voiced and different from how she remembered. More important. More intimidating.

"Hi, Hermione," he was saying. He was saying it softly. Like he might break her. He might. She noticed Harry wasn't there, heard the door swinging shut, knew he'd left them alone. "I think the proper thing to say at this point is 'Hello, Ron.'"

"Hello, Ron," she whispered. He kneeled in front of her. He was a bit awkward with his new height. He'd be almost two heads taller than her now. He smiled, and it wavered.

"Don't worry," he said, taking one of her hands gently in his. Taking the other hand, continued, "I won't break you."

And finally, she knew he wouldn't.

1

Tom

So he had strived. He had reached and failed to grasp. It rankled within him. He had been so sure that he was worthy of the Chamber of Secrets. He had been so sure that he could manipulate the Basilisk. But the Basilisk had manipulated him. Or, Salazar through the Basilisk. It was his failure with the Chamber that made Tom realize that what he'd wanted all along, was not to be as great as Salazar Slytherin. He wanted to be greater. How else could he prove that his half nature didn't limit him but to outdo the wizard that had prescribed such limits in the first place? And then, another emotion crept in to sit besides anger. Fear. Whenever he thought about this new goal, his need to be a greater wizard even than Slytherin himself, his heart raced past his grasp with an overwhelming fear that he would not succeed, that he would lead an ordinary life, that people would think of him as they wanted and their thoughts would not be high.

It didn't take long for Tom to recognize what a liability it was, this fear, and recognize that anger too had been a liability, and that it had cost him his goal. He took his failure as a lesson and thought, very hard, about who it was he needed to be. A creature without emotion, a creature who was capable of ruthlessness if it would lead to his goal. There was no other way. He would not be tossed about by the winds of fate. He would have the winds at his hand, and toss about others, those who had wronged him, those who would take the wind from his hands, everyone, perhaps, if he needed to.

So he created himself in the image he cast, created himself cold and cruel and perfectly manipulative. He enchanted a book to contain a model of himself, all the attributes he would need and their refinements. Himself, but perfect. Then he gave himself its own will, so that he could converse with it through the book, so that it would be his teacher.

He would learn to make no mistakes when he manipulated. He would come up with a plan to entrap Malfoy and all the others who had wronged him, those Muggle fools at the orphanage and his father and Crispin Marvolo. And he had his perfect self to help him, and guide him, and form him in the image he had created. At the end of his fifth year, Tom stood on the edge. He spent his sixth year letting the darkness below guide him.

0

Hermione

She knew they shouldnt've gone to Hogsmead. Sure, it was terrible not to be able to get a butterbeer and candy and meet up with Fred and George, or participate in the DA meetings that happened as a matter of course every Hogsmeade Weekend. Hermione knew that it sometimes got a bit claustrophobic being in the Trio, especially since the semester had started. Everyone knew about what had happened to Hermione, and no one wanted to intrude on the bond she and Harry and Ron had developed over the summer. Bellatrix LeStrange's death had also instilled a general unease among people Hermione had been friendly with, and it transferred to Harry and Ron. The only ones who really talked to them were Ginny and Neville and Luna. Without the Hogsmeade meetings with the DA, which had expanded to include most of each house's student body, and even a handful of Slytherins, their Trio were no longer really members of the club. They were its unofficial leaders. Everyone treated them as though they were generals or something. Harry was the most powerful wizard of them; Hermione was the brains, and Ron was the strategist. And with the respect that came with the others' deferrence, came distance.

But they had the Forbidden Forest, and the castle, which had already revealed four heretofore unknown rooms, and Hagrid, and Ginny and Neville and Luna, who would occasionally skip a weekend and stay at Hogwarts. Even though Ron could go, he never did. He hadn't left Hermione's side since the summer. He even studied with her, although he brought along a comic book or card game as often as he brought class materials. He came to her the second Quidditch practice was over with. On one occasion, as they were walking together while Harry was detained by Luna's new theory on heliotropes, he'd taken her hand. It didn't even look like he'd noticed he'd done it. His ears hadn't even turned red. And he hadn't let go.

So it was all right, really. She didn't see why Harry couldn't just find some way, somehow, to deal with it. Perhaps it was because he spent so much time preparing, working on new jinxes and hexes and countercurses with Lupin when he came on the weekends. Maybe he needed a break more than she did. She tried to argue with them, but as usual, she didn't convince them. And as usual, she went along with them to keep them out of trouble. It turned out that it was probably her presence that ultimately led to what happened.

They'd come out in Honeydukes, where they spent a good hour gawking over candy. They had their pick now, instead of everyone else's leftovers. When they went outside they found Hogsmeade covered in an early snow. They saw Hanna Abbott and Ernie MacMillan, and hailed them. They were heading to the DA meeting. At first it was a bit uncomfortable, as all the DA members turned to stare and insisted upon knowing how the Trio had got into Hogsmeade, which they really couldn't answer. Then they had a round of Butterbeers bought for them. Ron had a Firewhiskey and started regaling the group with tales of the clash of Fred and George's summer experiments and Bill and Fleur's wedding. Hermione was brought to tears at the mental image of prissy Fleur Delacour sporting golden acne and silver leeks sprouting from her nose. Harry and Ginny were talking animatedly in a corner, and Ginny was blushing. Luna was explaining something to Neville and Dean and Seamus very seriously; she didn't seem to notice that Seamus was laughing so hard that Butterbeer was spouting through his nose. It was evening by the time people started to filter out. It seemed like it had been a good idea after all.

Then Hermione and Ron and Harry had left, and Ginny had called Harry back, and instead of waiting for him, Ron pulled her into a little nook by the Hog's Head, looked at her so seriously that her heart seemed to collapse, and kissed her. And they had kissed for a long time, and then they held on to each other, and everything felt so nice, and so right. "We'd better go find Harry," Ron had said.

But they never did.


	2. Chapter 2

Thumph.

Thumph.

Thumph.

Thumph.

The slight vibrating in her ears was steady as a metronome, or perhaps a heart beat. Hermione had always been good at silent spells. She cast this one steadily, constantly, on her way to classes, whilst reading in the library. Sometimes she would practice strengthening it, and even when she didn't do that she worked on making it second nature. She cast it the second she woke up, at any time, and hoped that it would follow her to sleep. You never knew when you needed a shielding charm these days. Not since Harry had gone.

When it first happened, she and Ron had spent a month searching desperately in the library for spells or clues to Harry's whereabouts. Hermione had exhausted every locator spell and tracking device. In Hogsmeade, they could only follow his trail halfway down the road to the Shrieking Shack. That, they had checked thoroughly. He wasn't on the Marauder's map or the D.D. In the last fit of desperation, Hermione had transfigured alchemized gold into a globe to work roughly like the Marauder's map and the D.D. It had her, Ron's, and Harry's names only. Although her and Ron's were on the globe in Scotland, Harry's had not materialized at all. That was when every book they could find on locating had been read. That was when the ideas had run out.

She and Ron had separated from life at Hogwarts completely, then. They spent all their time in the Forbidden Forest, wandering it silently or kissing desperately. They started to skip classes (she'd stopped answering McGonogall's requests to speak), ignoring everyone except for Ginny, who they sat by in the Common Room every now and again. Hermione's trial had been moved several times now due to Harry's disappearance. They were waiting for the end; she wasn't worried about the trial anymore.

And then Dumbledore had summoned her. She went with Ron to his office and muttered the password (Cockroach Clusters). Ron went back to the Common Room to wait for her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Granger."

She wondered how long it would be. A half an hour of staring ahead and ignoring the Headmaster? An hour, perhaps?

"I must say you disappoint me. I would have thought you would be spending all your hours in the library trying to find out how you could find Harry."

A soft tutting sound escaped her. She'd brewed a Perk-up Potion for the first two weeks, and she and Ron hadn't slept during any of it. Done nothing, indeed. More like they'd done everything.

"He is still with us, Hermione. There is still hope."

She did look up at that. "How do you know?"

He looked at an object on his desk, a small glass box that held a suspended figure in it. "I do not know where, but I know that he is alive. And I believe I know the first steps to take in order to find him. But when I do... Well, you know that Voldemort is immortal, do you not?"

"What are you saying, Professor?"

Professor Dumbledore looked very old, sitting at his desk with his hands steepled between him. "Are you prepared, Miss Granger, for a very long and complicated story which I have hoped never to have to tell you?"

Her blood seemed to return, fully, to her body. "Tell me."

"First, I must preface this story by saying that I do fully hope that there is another way. Because if it is true, then it troubles me, since I have no way of knowing whether you have succeeded."

She just stared at him.

"You are familiar with a Time Turner, Miss Granger."

"But-- the last time. You can't change the past, Professor Dumbledore. That's what Professor McGonnagall told me afterwards. We didn't change it-- I mean we did, we just hadn't noticed how all the pieces fit together. It was recursive-- I can't see how..."

"Allow me to begin anew. Before I was Headmaster of the school, when I was simply a Transfiguration professor, a young woman came to me with a most fabulous story, which she told in a rather short fashion, given the contents." His eyes twinkled a bit at that. "She was a witch, she was English, but for whatever reason, she had never attended Hogwarts--at least, not in my memory, although she looked to be of school age."

A beat, a pause. Hermione had a very good idea of where this was going. But it couldn't be. Time Turners could only go back a few hours at the most; they were regulated. Accidents could happen without the limitation. And that was to say nothing of the fact that they had destroyed every one the Ministry had on hand when they had gone there in fifth year.

"She said she had come from the future, had traveled back years in time, which as you know, Miss Granger, isn't possible with a Time Turner. She had come back in a Time Machine hidden in the Forbidden Forest, a place that had been hidden with a Fidelus Charm. She said that I was the secret keeper, and had revealed it to her when I knew there was no other way. She said that she had come back to stop a boy at the school who was to become the greatest Dark Wizard of an age." He gave her a shrewd look. "She said her name was Hermione Granger."

"No," she breathed, for many, many reasons, her mind running paces for the first time in days.

"Do voice your objections, Miss Granger. I am confident that I can answer them."

"You can't-- you can't change the past," she said shrilly. "It's not that you shouldn't, it's that you can't."

"Have you ever noticed how it seems that things could have been no other way when you look back on them with the hindsight informed by particular experiences? After all, by that logic you could not have saved Buckbeak, but you did; it is just that you did not realize you had. Suffice to say, there is a way to do it. I remember what my part in it was. You are not there to make significant changes to the past. Tom Riddle will become Lord Voldemort-- he already has in the time you will travel to. You are only to change the things that come to pass after your departure."

"But-"

"Let me explain," he interrupted her kindly. "Harry cannot kill Lord Voldemort. However, he can kill Tom Riddle. The student under my charge at the time you came to me had not yet rendered himself immortal. What you went back to do is to bring Tom back to Harry. If Harry kills Tom, then Lord Voldemort ceases to be."

"But-- If I bring Tom-- here-- then I'll have changed the past. Without him, everything will have changed, won't it have? I don't even know if Harry would have been born."

"Very good, Miss Granger. This is where my doubts come in. I have taken care of one of yours. Did you ever see yourself while using the Time Turner?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever wonder what would happen if you did not go back to where you came from?"

"Well, I suppose there would be two of me, at least, until the moment the other one went back in time."

"Exactly. It is for me to create two Tom Riddles. That you do not have to worry about. You did disappear shortly after the creation of the Time Machine, with the second Tom. However, you returned to a place in the future we have not reached yet. So I do not know if you have succeeded."

There were many questions that came to her mind. She voiced one of them. "There's a Time Machine in the Forest? It's just...there?"

"And we come to the other difficulty. You see, Hermione, you invented it."

Thumph.

Thumph.

Thumph.

And she had gone back to Ron, light on her face, and it had crept back into his as she explained. Not about the Time Machine, of course. But the hope. There was hope. Dumbledore was close to finding him. She told him that they had to prepare. She threw herself back into her classes with such ferocity that she outdid even her former level of work. She and Ron spent all their free time practicing new jinxes and spell. She had found the most marvelous new library when she was thinking about her need to prepare outside of the Room of Requirement. And Dumbledore had started to teach her Occlumency, since Tom Riddle already was a gifted Legilimens during his time at Hogwarts. Like everything magical, it came to her easily.

Thumph.

Thumph.

Thumph.

"Do it, Ron. I have to be ready for it."

"Hermione, you know I can't."

This argument had been going on for an hour, and it looked like Ron wasn't about to change his stance on the issue at hand.

She cast a jelly-legs jinx on him. He fell to the floor, legs flailing, cursing.

"I won't take it off until you agree."

"You're mad, you know that Hermione?"

"These are mad times, Ron. We need to be able to help Harry when Dumbledore finds him. You know what the Death Eaters are capable of."

"I won't do it!"

Hermione sighed. "Very Well. Finite Incantatem."

Ron stood shakily.

"Do it," she said again.

"No," he said stubbornly.

"I swear, Ron, I'll make you want to-"

"Nothing could make me want to."

"Flagelle!" She shouted desperately. A streak of blood appeared on Ron's face. He heart plummetted to her chest.

"This is getting out of hand, Hermione," he said angrily, wiping the blood away with his hand.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry Ron, I'll fix it." She hurriedly went over and muttered a mending charm. His skin reappeared, white and unblemished. She looked at him again. "I'm really sorry."

"You'd better be," he replied, not looking at her.

Hermione bit her lip. "We have to be prepared, utterly prepared. We are the only thing that might save Harry, and Harry is the only thing standing in between this world and a worse one."

"Harry's not a thing!"

"Of course he's not, but what do the niceties matter with what we're facing? What the world is facing, Ron? I won't do it to you, but you need to do it to me, Ron. I need to get used to it. I need to be able to endure it."

"You'll never get used to it, you madwoman! Look what it did to Neville's parents!"

"That's because they weren't prepared!" she protested.

"I won't do it!"

"Then I'll find Malfoy and have him do it!"

Ron stood and pointed his wand at her. "Petrif-" Thumph.

Her perpetual shielding charm blocked his curse. "You can't hit me with what I don't want you to."

His mouth dropped. "How did you do that?"

"I've been practicing. I need to practice more. Please Ron. Please. It's not like I can cast it on myself, and I need to be ready. You'll feel worse if I'm not."

Ron stared at her, whitefaced. "I won't." His head drooped. "But if you want, you can Imperius me. I'll try to throw it off, and you can try to be a madwoman."

A moment, and a nod. "Imperio!" she said.

And then, a moment later, too quickly for him to throw it off, she made him shout "Crucio!"

Her scream was what he used to break through the Curse. He ran to her and lifted her up, muttering "Never again, never again, never again." But she forced him to do it three times a day, and within a few weeks she wasn't even screaming. After all, it wasn't a war she was preparing to face, it was Lord Voldemort.

She had thought that Dumbledore would bring back Harry, and she'd bring back Tom Riddle. One right after the other, barely up to par with the adventures they'd had in their years at Hogwarts. That was all that had occurred for her to think. She didn't think there would be anything more too it. Maybe they'd have to go through some kind of an intricate adventure in order to retrieve him, but she might have already gone back. She expected she'd go back once she'd gotten the news from Dumbledore that he'd found Harry. And actually, that part she got right. The rest she'd gotten wrong, though. The rest, she couldn't have anticipated at all.

It started on a Thursday night. A strange night for it to happen, wasn't it, a Thursday? A Friday or a Saturday night, even Sunday would make sense. It should have been raining or bleakly lighted at the very least. But even the weather didn't suggest anything. It was an unremarkable day, a warm day for winter and bright, snow laid out two weeks ago and promising not to visit again anytime soon. The air was what she remembered, even when she was running into the forest it didn't have that unnatural low pressure that always seemed to accompany strange things happening. Like that day Cedric died. The pressure had been low then. It should have been low enough to make you're ears bleed, for this.

She was sitting on one of the fields just outside the gates with Ginny and Ron after classes. Dinner was about to start in a half an hour, and Ron was complaining about how hungry he was. Neville had stopped by, and they were talking to him. He and Ginny had been practicing defense spells lately. The DA hadn't met since Harry had disappeared, and people had disbanded into little groups. Little did anyone know they would become platoons.

There had been a light breeze, and Hermione had wrapped her cloak around her. She was looking lazily at the horizon, watching the sun's slow arc back to the west, when she saw a patch of smoke drifting lazily up into the air. It took her a moment to react. Somehow it didn't look utterly out of place. Perhaps because it looked like it wasn't much. It took a moment for Hermione to remember to account for the rules of perspective. That was entirely too much smoke to be coming from anything good, at such a distance. And in the general vicinity of Hogsmeade.

Ron noticed her face immediately. And turned to look at the same thing she was. Ginny and Neville followed suit.

"Oh no," Ginny moaned.

"It's at Hogsmeade," said Ron.

They stood. "What do you think it is?" said Neville.

They watched it for a moment. Hermione shook herself. Something needed to be done. Immediately if possible. "Let's get Dumbledore," she said, softly but firmly.

Ron turned to her, nodded. As she turned to run into the castle Hermione noticed a few other people standing, as well. There was Ernie MacMillan and Hannah Abott. There was Terry Boot and Michael Corner. They streamed past her as she ran to the castle, Ron and Ginny in front of her. Her heart was drumming violently in her ears. People paused as they ran by. After all, she found herself thinking, when we run it always means something.

They ran into Professor McGonnagall first.

"Professor!" Hermione panted. "Hogsmeade!"

"I know," she answered, a firm hand on Hermione's shoulder. She had a severe look about her face. "I know, child." She looked at the four of them. "I want you in Gryffindor tower, right now. I'm going to find the prefects from all the houses now."

"Ernie and Hannah are outside," she gasped in an effort to be helpful.

Professor McGonnagall nodded crisply and proceeded to the front door. They looked at each other.

"What now?" said Neville.

"Well, I can tell you one thing," said Ron. "We're definitely not going to Gryffindor tower for anything other than the invisibility cloaks and the maps."

"I've got Perk-Up Potion in my room," said Hermione. "We want to be in good shape if we're going to Hogsmeade." Even a year ago she supposed she would have hesitated. But she knew they would help more by acting earlier. Gods, she thought, Dumbledore hadn't even found Harry yet.

They went back to the Towers and got everything useful they could think of. Then they headed to the hump-backed witch who stood at the entrance to Honeydukes. But when Ron told the statue the password, nothing happened. Hermione checked the Marauder's Map. It was criminally unhelpful.

"What'll we do?" Ron cried in frustration.

"Check the other entrances," said Hermione. "Do you all still have your Galleons?"

Ginny and Neville nodded. Hermione knew Ron carried his as a matter of course. "Ginny, you go to the South Wing. Ron, try the exit in the kitchens. Stun Filch if he tries to stop you. Neville, try the one by the picture of Gregory the Gray." There was only one left, for her. "If your passage is open, just transfigure a number on the coin. One, two three, four," she said hurriedly, pointing respectively at Ron, Neville, Ginny, and herself. "Remember what passageways the others have got. Got it?"

The others nodded quickly, and the group split off to their consecutive passageways. Hermione rushed up the staircase to the entrance on the fourth floor. She had a growing conviction that all the exits had somehow been magically sealed, to prevent any of the students from leaving whether by intention or accident. Still, they had to try it. Her breath grew ragged as she ran up the last staircase. Really, she should have been trying all this time to get in shape. How good was a protective jinx if you couldn't get somewhere vital on time? She turned left at the top of the staircase, silently thanking it for staying in place. Second corridor on the left. Third door on the right. Five bricks out and two bricks up. Hermione skidded in front of it and hurriedly jabbed it with her index finger. She moaned when it didn't give way. She sat for a moment, hoping against hope for her coin to grow hot. It didn't.

They hadn't said what to do if no one found anything. Still, when Hermione went to the entrance hall, she found everyone there. Thank goodness the wits kicked in during these situations.

"The gates?" Ron said by way of greeting. Hermione nodded, and the four made to push open the doors to the entrance. They didn't budge. Ron tried the unlocking spell but Hermione knew it wouldn't work. She could sense the wards at the door. Dumbledore had probably set them. Ron kicked the door in a fit of frustration and got a banged toe for his effort.

All that Hermione could think was that people were dying, people were dying, people were dying. She looked out of the window. Smoke now covered the horizon. Hogsmeade was burning. They hadn't found Harry yet. But Dumbledore would find Harry, wouldn't he? He already had. He'd already been witness to her dismissal back in time. But what did it matter if she wouldn't prevent any of this?

The group turned and began plodding up the steps to Gryffindor tower. For once, a situation had arisen that they could find no way to participate in.

"I can't believe this!" Ron groused as they made their way to the Fat Lady's portrait.

"Equivocation," said Ginny.

"They're just trying to keep us safe," said Hermione.

"But us--I mean, the DA--"

"If we can get out, I suppose they can get in."

But they got in anyway, as it was. Although not before the students got out. Hermione had finally retired to her room, more to be alone than anything. She always thought better by herself. Lavender and Parvati were at the window with their arms around each other, looking over to Hogsmeade. By now, an orange glow was perceptible in the distance. They didn't turn to her, or say anything to each other. They just looked into the distance. Hermione pulled on her nightgown and sat in her bed, with her knees drawn up to her chest. How many were dead now? If they'd been able to leave the grounds, would there be less dead, or more? How many would die before she came back with Tom Riddle to complete the prophecy?

Hermione looked over to Lavender and Parvati, at the sky that overhung it all. The glow from the fires in Hogsmeade had barely made a dent in the vast and darkening blue. And that was when the idea came. "Brooms," she breathed. Lavender and Parvati broke apart.

"What is it, Hermione?" asked Parvati. She's lived in the same dormitory long enough to know the sound of one of Hermione's great ideas.

"It's so simple," she said. "Brooms! We can get to Hogsmeade on brooms!"

Lavender looked at Parvati, and then back at Hermione. Her face was very white, but she nodded. "We're coming with you."

"You should contact the rest of the DA," said Parvati. "Some of them have families there," she added, almost as an afterthought.

Hermione nodded brusquely and took her Galleon out of her pocket. She muttered an incantation and passed her wand over the coin; it grew warm.

"Where shall they meet us?" asked Lavender.

"Where else?" asked Hermione. "The Room of Requirement."

The Room of Requirement turned out to have been a very good idea indeed, for not only was it stocked with high-quality brooms, but it was also stocked with portable dark detectors, enchanted swords, and every one of the more serious tools that Weasely's Wizard Wheezes carried. Nearly everyone from the DA was there within minutes. Hermione and Ron stood at the front of the room.

"Those of you who want to go to Hogsmeade, take a broom and whatever else you think will come in handy," said Ron. People started to move, but Hermione put a hand up.

"Listen, this is important. The castle has been enchanted to keep us in for our own safety, and we have to take that seriously. I want everyone to pair up with another person. Make sure to look out for that person. And I want each pair to find another pair so you can keep an eye out for each other. If anyone gets hurt, their partner should bring them back here immediately. If anyone feels overwhelmed, even a bit, come straight back to Hogwarts. You'll do better to be a bit cowardly in a situation like this than stupidly brave."

Ron nodded. "Also, some students should remain behind to watch over the grounds. It's likely once they see us coming back here on brooms the Death Eaters will copy us. If anyone sees a Death Eater on the grounds, get our attention with the Galleons. If that happens, we are to immediately fall back to protect the castle. Understand, everyone?"

There was desultory nodding, but they never saw their orders put into action. As soon as the first group of students had taken off from the Astronomy Tower (she was riding on Ron's broom, being more secure in his flying abilities than her own), she saw the first Death Eaters streaming onto the grounds. They had gotten through the gates. A cold hand grabbed hold of Hermione's heart and squeezed. She didn't like to think what their presence could possibly mean.

Ginny pulled alongside of herself and Ron. "What will we do?" she called, the wind stripping the words from her mouth one by one.

"Consider ourselves fallen back and start defending the grounds!" Hermione shouted. The people around her heard and people started to pass the word along. Ron swooped downward at a dangerous-seeming angle and Hermione steeled herself against the reeling sensation. They plunged into a group of Death Eaters and they scattered, immediately firing curses at them. Hermione jumped off her broom and readied her wand. Others were landing around her.

"Circle them!" Ron called to those above her.

_Thumph._. A purple light was disappated as her Shielding Charm hit it."We've been told to go for the mudbloods first," the figure hissed.

Hermione slashed her wand in a downward arc; a jet of yellow light hit the Death Eater and he collapsed. There was another right before her. Wordlessly, she slashed at the air, all her senses sharpening as the Death Eaters closed in on her and Ron. Roughly half of Ron's spells were spoken, and a great deal of them struck the Death Eaters violently. He screamed as a Crucio hit him.

"I always knew we'd meet like this, blood traiter," a high voice sneered. Although the figure who uttered it was concealed along with the rest of the Death Eaters, it wasn't necessary to see his face.

"Weasely." A curt nod in her direction. "Mudblood"

Ron bristled visibly.

"Busy living up to everyone's expectations, are we Malfoy?"

Malfoy pointed his wand at Ron's chest. "It's my job to keep the likes of you from spawning, after all."

"Pet-"

"Protego!" Ron just ducked the rebounding spell. It went through two Death eaters and his Zacharius Smith.

Hermione quickly cast a protection spell in his direction, and flicked her wand. "Apollio!" Malfoy went sailing through the sky in a very satisfying arc.

"Too bad you didn't bounce that time, Malfoy!" Ron called heartily behind him. Suddenly he ducked. A green bolt rushed over his head and struck one of the Death Eaters who had been battling Zacharius Smith. He came up, shaken. "Blimey," he muttered in a low voice. "Didn't even know it was coming, just felt the need to duck."

"I expect we'll come out of this a bit shellshocked," Hermione replied seriously.

"Too right. Do you reckon we should stand back-to-back?"

"Yes, that makes sense." They smiled at each other under the moon, and stood back to back. Ginny was fighting off two Death Eaters from getting to her, firing off Bat Bogey Hexes , Wingardium Leviosas, and Senselessia, which deprived the combatants of their senses. Hermione leveled a Knock-Out Hex towards the left one's back. He fell, prompting the other one to look towards her and raise his wand. His nose suddenly sprouted in bat wings that grew in his nostrils and flew away in clusters to latch onto his head.

Ginny strided over and pivoted to look for any comers. She stood before the first one's crumpled form and kicked it lightly. "That one was Lucius Malfoy," she told Hermione. "And a right dirty mouth he has on him."

"The reinforcements have arrived!" called Ron, who was having another go at Malfoy. "I see Kingsley Shacklebolt and Mundungus!" A red light hit him and he was knocked back, into another Death Eater. The fallen Death Eater stood up and pointed his wand at Ron.

"Reflecto!" Hermione shouted, and the Death Eater's spell rebounded, making a live snake burst through his mouth and bite him in the chest.

"I love you, Hermione."

She smiled and dodged a curse. Then they heard: "Potter's friends are over there!" come from somewhere in Draco's vicinity. The atmosphere around them changed palpably, as more and more Death eaters turned from DA members to Hermione, Ron, and Ginny. Draco stepped to the edge of the converging Death eaters, leveling his wand at Hermione. "You first, to be fair. Since you are just a Mudblood."

Ron gave her a fleeting, scared look, and brought his wand up, but not before Draco said "Cru-" and Ron stepped in front of Hermione to take the curse. But Draco didn't finish the spell. Instead, he smiled, and flicked his wand at Ron. Like he'd been planning to do just that all along.

She screamed his name as he fell. He was erupting blood.

She was facing Draco with her wand drawn, saying "Avada-", and then a Death Eater took hold of Ginny by the throat. What she was about to say drove into her with the impact of the Knight Bus, and she stood still. Draco was smiling, but she had to worry about Ginny. She petrified the Death Eater holding her; his grip grew hard when the spell hit him and Ginny toppled over with him.

"Crucio!" Draco shouted.

_Thumpth_

A look of shock, and then comprehension, and he leveled his wand again. "Crucio!"

_Thumpth_

She turned to Ron, who was white and still, though still leaking blood. He looked unconscious. She fell over him, and Malfoy said, again, "Crucio!"

_Thumpth._

"Episkey!" she whispered.

"Crucio!" he shouted.

_Thumpth_

Why wasn't he stopping? "Episkey," she muttered. "Episkey, Episky." Everything was knitting together, but not enough. It was like surgery after severe bodily harm. Ron was fading.

"Crucio!" Malfoy shouted again, his voice breaking on the spell.

_Thumpth_

It was very annoying, the way he kept on doing that. She tried to remember that Healing chant she'd read about, but she'd never learned the intonation. And into the first bar, it lost its power, because, of course, Draco cast Crucio again-

_Thumpth_

And the spell was off a beat, and died. "Bastard!" she cried.

"Crucio!"

_Thumpth_

"You're just a mediocre wizard, Draco. Can't you stop being a pest and do more important things?"

"Crucio!"

And it was cast just a moment before-

_Thuuuu-_

But it had hit her. Her body seized up. All her training had allowed her to barely betray emotion when she felt the pain, and to throw the pain off, but it hurt. And Draco could tell, she knew just by looking at him.

"What was that you were just saying, Mudblood? I may be mediocre, but you'll always be low. Low class, low purity, low viability, low esteem, low worth." Even despite his mask, she could detect a sneer.

Petrificus Totalus, she thought. Petrificus Totalus. And Draco fell. Ginny was kneeling by Ron. There were five more Death Eaters looming.

She arced her wand at them, her spell slashing into them and causing three to fall at once. She knelt by Ron again. "Ginny, can you cast that corporeal Shield charm I was teaching you and Ron the other day?"

Ginny nodded mutely, pointed her wand to the sky, and said, "Scutio!" An opaque bubble sprouted from the tip of her wand, surrounding them. Not a moment later, spells began to rebound off it. Ginny gritted her teeth. Hermione started the chant again, looking at him intently, praying she'd got the intonation right. His lips were blue by now, and he wasn't responding to Ginny, who was shaking his shoulders repeatedly. Hermione continued the chant. She could tell his wounds were knitting together more substantially than with Episkey. By the end of the spell, the wounds had knit themselves so that there was a red line running into Ron's blood-soaked shirt. His lips, however, were still blue, and his eyes had a frightening glazed look to them.

She and Ginny stared at each other for a short moment. "That's all I can do. We have to go to Madame Pomfrey."

Ginny nodded. Then she shook her head. "You go. I'm staying. I've got to do what I can. I can't allow them to get away with this." Her eyes were fierce, and tears were breaking over them. "And I don't want to know, until I'm done," she whispered.

Hermione didn't have to ask what she didn't want to know about.

"Mobilocorpus," muttered Hermione, and Ginny broke the corporeal Shield. As soon as it broke she noticed Peeves, of all the things in the world, in the middle of the battle, chucking disappearing capsules from Fred and George's store, for the most part at Death Eaters, although he threw one at Dean Thomas moments before a curse would have hit him. Seamus dodged an incoming spell and ran to find him. Well, they were following the instructions, anyway. Then she ran for the school entrance, and for Madame Pomfrey's. She could hear Ginny shouting curses hysterically behind her.

_Thumpth._

Hermione's shielding charm blocked a spell she hadn't seen coming. Ron's head bobbed along, and she reached the steps, and pushed open the door. It was utterly vacant, and somehow it made her feel chillier than ever. She made a dash for Madame Pomfrey's. It seemed like it took her longer to get there than it ever had done.

When she reached Madame Pomfrey's office the mediwitch was bustling as Hermione had never seen her before. The hospital wing had been hastily expanded to admit the sudden influx of students, and by the looks of it, survivors from Hogsmeade. People were dripping blood and spouting pus; she saw Dennis Creevey glowing pink and gagging, and a Madame Pomfrey was unable to get anything to touch him. There were two women dressed in St. Mungo's robes bustling around the room.

"Madame Pomfrey!" Hermione yelled, and the noise in the room seemed to dim, for a moment. Madame Pomfrey turned to her, set her lips in a line, and rushed over, conjuring a hospital bed right under Ron.

"What happened to him?" Madame Pomfrey asked, bending over him.

"Malfoy hit him with--it looks like Sectumsempra."

Madame Pomfrey didn't move, but her lips looked even more set together.

"Madame Pomfrey?"

The responding voice sounded lower and older than Hermione had ever heard it. "Miss Grang--Hermione, dear." She looked up at Hermione and squeezed her hand. "He's dead."

"What? But I--" she choked on the words and nodded. Someone started screaming towards the back. She looked down at Ron. Yes, there it was, the familiar face that seemed to descend over everyone who she had seen dead. "You should-" she was crying already. "--get back to help the others. I'll be fine." She held the sobs in her throat and refused to give in to the urge to curl into a ball right there on the floor. She put a hand to Ron's face. It was cool to the touch. Madame Pomfrey let go of her hand.

"All right, dear," said Madame Pomfrey, and began to move towards the back. Hermione noticed she was limping.

After a last look at Ron, Hermione left the Hospital Wing.

There was a bag that Hermione had prepared soon after Dumbledore had summoned her to his office. It contained her invisibility cloak, the Marauder's Map, and the DD. It contained samples of potions she had brewed for various purposes this year. Poisons and Healing potions, which she couldn't bring herself to look at now. She had a set of dragon-hide hiking gear, which she brought with her on the more dangerous trips to the Forbidden Forest. There was a virtual library in there, which she had compacted and rendered weightless, which comprised the most useful books from the Room of Requirement Library, and those books which had been on the list she'd made up of all books written after 1944, which was where she was headed. She closed her fist around the handle, noting that it was covered in blood. Ron's blood, of course.

Dumbledore had finally found Harry. He was out there right now. If Hermione hazarded a peek through her dormitory window onto the grounds, she'd have a good chance of picking him out. He was tied to a stake; he had appeared out of nowhere. Or where, only Dumbledore and Voldemort knew. Voldemort was coming, Dumbledore said. To kill Harry. This was the window of opportunity that had been given to them. Hermione was to come back to this exact moment with Tom Riddle, before Voldemort appeared on the scene. She was to do something to keep the Death Eaters away, something to free Harry so that he could kill Tom Riddle. She had a year in which to plan it. She knew she should note everyone's position. Of course, positions in a game of war were Ron's specialty. The empty cave in her chest seemed to expand, so that she thought she would burst. Instead, she deflated, took out a wizarding camera, and moved toward the window. Lavender and Parvati were out there, on the grounds. At least they weren't in Madame Pomfrey's. Like Ron. She took a picture of the battlefield resolutely, and saw Ron's face in the flash. What use was any of this, anyway, if it wouldn't save Ron?

Hermione couldn't resist the chance to send a spell out into the Death Eaters. She could make out a patch near the entrance that she leveled a Stunning Spell at, and sent a few Senselessias out at others she selected. Then she grabbed her bag and ran out of her dormitory. She heard a curse hit her window, but it bounced off harmlessly. There were still plenty of protections in the castle left.

She had asked Dumbledore where Harry had been, before. He had smiled ruefully and said, "A place which is neither here nor there," Dumbledore said. "Now, let me tell you where the Time Machine is. You will find it next to the little gulpyfish pond near the unicorn patch. It is directly behind the third tree the right of the giant Grasshunter Tree."

"And I just--"

"Step in, and close the door."

"And I'll come out in the same place?"

"You will be apparated out somewhere near where Hagrid's hut is now. Of course, then, it hadn't been built yet."

She'd turned away, ready to fetch her bag, and Dumbledore had said, "Oh, remember to avoid the centaurs."

"What?"

He had smiled and doffed his cap to her. "You must excuse me, Miss Granger, but Lord Voldemort has appeared near Hogwarts, and I must go to hold him off while we wait for your reappearance."

"But-" and he handed a letter addressed to himself, and one addressed to her, and disapparated.

On her way to the Time Machine, Hermione passed Ginny one more time. She had been surrounded by Death Eaters, screaming. Luna Lovegood, who was floating on a reversed corporeal Shield Charm, dreamily threw spells in Ginny's direction. One Death eater fell.

The Time Machine was there all right. Right behind the third tree from the left of the Grasshunter Tree. It was a gleaming sculpture of metal, humming intensely with spells. Hermione didn't recognize the door at first. It turned out to be an arc of what looked like steel protruding from the general frame, connecting to an arc that would just allow her in. It looked immobile, but when Hermione stepped in, the arc curled into a more intricate design at her touch, bringing itself in to fully enclose her. No sooner did the arc fully conform to the rest of the Time Machine, than did Hogwarts, and the battle raging in front of it, disappear.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: I don't own any of this. Nuff said. Reviewers, I love you, you are my lifeblood, my first, last, only. I will, once I can, get to you, but I am having a hectic week and am just trying to update update update. So I will try to do personal by-your-bys. I have chapters of this already written, so hopefully this will be regularly posted. Please enjoy!

Three Meetings

In an instant, fifty some-odd years were gone, and so was the time machine. She landed in the Forbidden Forest of all those years ago. It seemed no different. Probably very little had changed. The centaurs were here; Hermione knew Hagrid had released Aragog into the forest, the unicorns were probably relatively unchanged. It felt as dense and ozoney and dangerous as it had moments ago, decades into the future. Only here, there was no distant sound of screaming. Hermione stood stock still, willing the tension to leave her. She knew she must look like a ghost, clad only in her nightgown and covered in blood. Blood that had been spilled, Ron's blood. She felt a distant relief that she had restrained herself from killing after all. She couldn't be responsible for a mask like the one that had settled on Ron's face, on her parent's face. On Bellatrix LeStrange's face. It was a horrible mask no matter who it sat on. Hermione had by now managed to replace most of her naturally occurring thoughts with strategy and plans and purpose. She felt hunger and pain and cold distantly. Looking down to survey herself, she knew she looked positively indecent. Well, then, time to go.

She pulled out the DD and began to move carefully through the forest. Tonight it was misty, nearly verging on rain. It was a mournful sort of night, which felt appropriate to Hermione. The tears in the skirt of her nightgown exposed her bare leg to potentially lethal varieties of plant life, but she was an old hand at identifying the various breeds by the moonlight. A sort of diffuse light seemed to be carried on the mist, making her task easier, but soaking her nightgown so that it clung to her body and chilled her to the bone. The numbness seemed to help. It helped drown out that last vacant look in Ron's face, the desperation she had left Ginny to face on her own. She swallowed, and moved on. Later. She would deal with it later. She moved around a patch of dragontitis, and could tell the forest cleared a few feet ahead. The walk to the castle was sure to be shorter than the walk to the Time Machine had been; she had been shunted nearer to the edge of the forest. The forest cleared into

the grounds, and she moved across it silently, quickly, encased in cold mist. She couldn't help but note how peaceful the grounds were.

And then she was at the door. She clasped a handle with her hand, closed her eyes, and resolutely

pulled it open. It opened slowly, and took a good deal of her strength to open it. She opened her eyes,

looking into the entrance hall, the door propped open, the night behind her, the past in front of her. How strange. It looked exactly the same. The last time she had been here, and had it been, really, only an hour ago? The last time she was here she had been carrying Ron. Had he been alive, then? Or had he died under the corporeal shield?

Hermione stood there for a long time. She was moving so slowly tonight, pausing at each intersection to listen to the afterglow of the war she was here to prevent. A figure moved in front of her. She hadn't even seen it enter the room. It paused at the sight of her, and a strange sight she must have made indeed, her hair a dark storm from the mist, pale and covered in blood. The figure stared at her, and she stared back. Her eyes adjusted to the dim glow of the candles. A tall figure with dark hair and a pale face. Her heart crashed inside her. She knew even before he moved closer who he was. And she couldn't tear her eyes away. The reason she was here. The reason she had killed. The reason everyone she loved was dead or nearly there.

Tom moved closer to the thin girl standing in the doorway. He hardly knew what to say. So little surprised him these days, as his control grew stronger and more accurate. But this girl, who had simply appeared inside Hogwarts, which was said to be impenetrable since the appearance of Grindenwald. Who was covered in blood, and staring at him. No one had ever looked at him like that before, like they knew him better than he did. It wasn't until he was very close to her that he realized she was as young as him, her features small and delicate. But the eyes belied her age. The ones that wouldn't let his go of his. She was looking at him like he'd betrayed her, and he had no idea who she was.

Still silent, because after all there was nothing to say, Tom took off his cloak and offered it to her.

After a long moment, still not prying her eyes from his face, she took the cloak, but did not move to put it on. He realized that she was pointing her wand at him, and wondered if she'd had it out all this time. It had been a long time since anyone had taken him unawares.

"Go ahead, put it on," he said, and realized he could see through the bloodied material of her

nightgown to her skin. He immediately looked away, feeling a strange sensation provoked by the primal combination of blood and exposed skin. Slowly, she put on the cloak, with one hand so that her wand was not lowered. "What happened to you?"

"I need to see Dumbledore," she finally said, her voice ragged and nearly a whisper.

"Dumbledore? Surely you mean Dippet?"

"No." She looked quite close to threatening him, and he grasped for his own wand as well. "Take me to Dumbledore."

"Right. Come on then," he said, putting an arm out so she would walk in front of him. But she

wouldn't, and after a few moments they had silently negotiated so that they walked side by side, glancing at each other in appraisal. "You should know it is my duty to inform Dippet."

"Of course you will. It doesn't matter." Her eyes were huge, her lips pale. There was a streak of

drying blood running along her jawline. They walked in silence to the northeast hall.

Dumbledore's office was on the ground floor, at the end of a long passageway. In the future, it had

been an unused classroom, and after that, the room that Firenze had used to teach his classes in. She and Ron had once spent a night there. She looked again at the boy beside her. He looked so utterly incapable of what he would come to do, to be. His face was smooth and impassive, threateningly unreadable, but the changes he had gone through to become Lord Voldemort seemed anastronomical distance away. This boy was her age. How did a person change so much? She had changed, yes, but even so she did not understand this degree of change. She reminded herself that he had already killed a girl, that he would kill his own father within a year.

They were in front of Dumbledore's door now. Tom knocked, and turned to her. "He'll answer," he told her. "I'm going to go to Headmaster Dippet while you meet with Professor Dumbledore." She didn't reply, and he turned to leave, then paused. "I'm Tom, by the way." He extended his hand, and with a feeling of unreality, she took it. "Your hand," he said. "It's absolutely chilled."

"It doesn't matter," she said, in the same raw, whispered voice.

"Calisperos," he incanted, pointing at her.

_Thumph._

The shield charm came back to life unconsciously, and the warming charm was blocked. Again, they locked eyes, and he seemed to come to some kind of conclusion. Then the door knob was turning, and Tom stiffened and turned suddenly to leave. He looked over his shoulder at her, once, and she watched him disappear down the hall. Then she turned to face Dumbledore. His hair was auburn and his face a good deal less lined, but he was eminently and comfortingly recognizable. He seemed completely undisturbed at the sight of her.

"Come in, child, come in."

"Were you expecting me?"

"No, certainly not, but you are here, so here we are." Hermione followed him into his chambers. He was wearing blue night robes spangled with stars and moons. Hermione pulled Tom's robes around her closerto hide her own wild appearance. "What is your name, child?"

"Hermione Granger."

"And you are a witch, I am assuming from the wand in your hand?"

"Yes."

"It seems strange that I have not seen you in all my years at Hogwarts."

"No, you wouldn't have." She sighed, the exhaustion that had been distant suddenly very close

at hand. "I come from fifty years in the future. I just came from... a war. They burned Hogsmeade, and came to Hogwarts. They killed my parents, and my boyfriend, and my friends, and the only person who could have stopped it-- well, he's prophesized to be the only one who can kill Voldemort--" She saw him stiffen slightly at the name-- "--is tied to a stake waiting for The greatest Dark Lord of the age to kill him. I've come back because it's the last chance we have. That Dark Lord--he just walked me to your door. His name is Tom Riddle. I have to bring him to the future so Harry can kill him. There's no other way." She looked up, expecting some kind of expression at this condensed and unbelievable story, but there was only amusement in Dumbledore's eyes. She reached into her bag and pulled out the roll of parchment his elder self had written. "Here," she said, proferring the roll. "It's all here. You wrote this, or will write this, in about fifty years."

Professor Dumbledore took the parchment and unrolled it, placing a pair of spectacles from his

desk on the tip of his long nose. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "Would you care for a lemon drop?" He extended a bowl of candy to her, and she took one. He turned back to the letter, and she unwrapped the candy and put it in her mouth, letting it sit until it had dissolved. Some time after that, Dumbledore rolled the parchment back up again and looked over his spectacles at her. "Extraordinary."

Hermione merely shrugged.

"We will, of course, have to go to Headmaster Dippet's office to explain something about this to

him. Did Tom already go to inform him?"

"Yes," said Hermione.

"Well, first, let us do something about your appearance."

Hermione drew Tom's cloak tighter around her in response. But she was already clothed in a clean and freshly pressed school uniform. Her hair was also dry. She brought up her hands, which no longer had a speck of blood on them. "Thank you," she said.

"Forgive me for not doing you the favor earlier."

Hermione shrugged off Tom's cloak with relief. It smelled pleasant, and that bothered her.

"Now there is the matter of the identity which we shall have to present to Headmaster Dippet, in order to prevent anyone from recognizing you in the future."

"What? You aren't going to change my appearance, are you?" That would be entirely too much. She needed to be able to recognize herself in the mirror.

"No, no. Mr. Riddle has already seen you as you currently appear, to say the least. In this letter, it

says that you speak French proficiently?"

"Yes. My family and I used to vacation in France."

"Good, good. We will say you have gone to Beauxbatons."

"And the reason for my transfer?"

"My dear, it seems you will be far too busy to attend class with the rest of the students. And it

seems entirely inadvisable for you to associate with the student population. This letter informs me that you are here in order to build a time machine, and in fifty years, I will come to the conclusion that the best way to expedite the process is to apprentice you to our Arithmancy professor. Arithmancy and Transfiguration will be the two most vital components of your project."

"Oh," she said with mixed relief and frustration. She was already very far ahead in her studies, and had been looking forward to taking her NEWTs. However, it was nice to know that she would have assistance in her project.

"And as for your name-"

"My name? I couldn't respond to anything but Hermione."

"Will Mione do?"

"Oh. Yes, I don't suppose that's too bad."

"And it would be better if you were to be a member of a pureblooded family."

"But I'm not pureblooded," she said, knowing full well that she was being difficult.

"I am informed that you will quite like being a member of this particular family. They have been

friends to Muggles for a long time, and they would be honored to help your cause. Or they are sure to be, since they already have been, my future self explains here."

"The Weasleys? But I don't have red hair," Hermione said wonderingly.

"Oh, not Weasley, Miss Granger. From now on, you will be known as Mione Potter."

They departed to Headmaster Dippet's office after a hurried discussion over ways, means, and priorities. There was a story Dumbledore had already thought of, or would already have thought have, and included it in the letter. Grindenwald had been known to be operating largely in France, involving himself in the war there, snuffing out members of the Resistance magically. The few magical members of the Resistance had been countering his efforts. They were to explain Hermione's appearance by intimating she had been involved in one of their confrontations. They would ask that Dippet, and Tom, who was surely in his office, never say a word of it to anyone, including the Arithmancy professor Hermione was to be assigned to. It turned out to be a good thing Tom had seen her. He'd be naturally curious at her sudden appearance, although it was towards the beginning of the semester. They'd have a lot more success making him privy to a secret, albeit a false one, than by being reticent.

Dippet's office was in the same place Dumbledore's had been, although the stone-made Griffin had been replaced by an Eagle.

"Sophia," said Dumbledore. The stairs turned round with a clank, and they stepped into the staircase, going into Dippet's office when prompted. Dippet's desk was exactly where Dumbledore's had been, and Dippet, who was chubby and with a beard as long and grey as Dumbledore's had been long and white, was sitting at the desk. Across from him, Tom Riddle was sitting with his hands folded, a cool and appraising look on his face. Hermione avoided meeting his gaze, which he noticed. Instead she noted the walls covered in pictures, which was where the resemblances between the future and past rooms ended. Where Dumbledore had gadgets, Dippet had a geometrical stack of crystal boxes which contained various forms of magical energy held suspended in the boxes. Making such boxes to contain magical energies was an advanced working in itself; the study was another question. And the room was slightly bigger, which was because the walls had been enlarged to accommadate eight doorways. One of the doors was open, a potions room inside. Hermione broke off studying it when Dumbledore guided her into a chair. She sat down and faced Dippet, who smiled at her kindly.

"I understand you have come to this school... to seek out Professor Dumbledore?"

"Yes."

"And what is your name, Miss?"

"Potter. Mione Potter."

"I see. Mr. Riddle has told me that you seemed to have been rather more... distressed-looking than you appear now."

"Yes, I suppose I was."

"May I ask how you came to be... as you were?"

Dumbledore cleared his throat, and the others turned to him. "Miss Potter has been in France until now. She has just come from a skirmish in Alsace."

"Do you go to school in France? At Beauxbatons?" Dippet asked.

"Yes."

"I see. How did you make it to the front door?"

"I contacted Monsieur Dumbledore in Hogsmeade, and he took down enough wards for me to get through."

"Excuse me for asking, Miss Potter, but why did you go to Beauxbatons? You sound English."

"My family lives here, but my mother wanted me to have a French education."

"I see, I see. I am sorry for all the questions at such a time, child, but I do like to keep abreast of such important happenings. Are you quite alright? Would you like to see the school's Mediwitch?"

"No," said Hermione.

"Was anyone greatly hurt?"

It made sense to tell the truth, however indirect it was. "Yes," she said. She sensed a movement from beside her, where Tom was sitting.

"I'm terribly sorry, young lady." He looked now at Dumbledore, an unspoken question lifting his eyebrows. Dumbledore knew which one it must be.

"As it turns out, Miss Potter had been working on an... interdisciplinary sort of project at her school, which she has been keeping me informed of. Her family and I are close friends, you see, and I have always been her emergency contact. It seems she will be safest here, and if she is in need of a distraction, she can continue this project as she wishes. It is an interesting problem, and I believe I can interest Professor O'Bleeke in it."

"Oh?"

"Yes. And I believe lodgings within Ravenclaw would be best. It seems the right sort of atmosphere for her."

Dippet smiled at the mention of Ravenclaw. "Yes, it does beget calm and cool-headedness, Miss Potter. I couldn't recommend it more myself." She managed a thin smile at him. She chanced a glance towards Tom. He was looking intently at the corner of the Headmaster's ceiling. "But what year are you in, my dear? You look very young."

"I'm seventeen."

"Oh? Shouldn't you continue in your studies?"

"May I make a recommendation?" asked Dumbledore.

"Yes, of course."

"I suggest we administer the NEWT-level tests to Miss Potter. I am confident that she is currently able to pass all of them, and if that is the case, then there is no reason to give her more work than necessary."

Hermione stared. Fat lot of warning that was. And Dumbledore was just twinkling at her. Well, it wasn't as if she couldn't take them again when she returned. She let a sigh escape her.

"I think our guest is growing tired. She has been through enough exertion tonight," said Dumbledore. Well, a bed did sound nice, however much he had misconstrued her feelings. And it would, she thought, seeing Riddle shift out of the corner of her eye, be a relief to leave this room. She stood.

"Shall I show Miss Potter to the Ravenclaw dormitories?" came a quiet voice from beside her. Tom was still sitting, his hands motionless in his lap. She and Dumbledore exchanged a look.

"That is very kind of you, Tom. Please introduce her to Professor O'Bleeke when you arrive," the Headmaster volunteered. Another glance between herself and Dumbledore. It wouldn't do to protest, she was sure, and Dumbledore seemed to share her thoughts.

Tom stood, and nodded to the Headmaster. "Goodnight, Headmaster Dippet."

"Goodnight."

He nodded at Dumbledore. "Professor Dumbledore."

"Tom." And Dumbledore grasped Hermione's arm briefly. "Mione. I will speak to you tomorrow."

Hermione nodded vaguely in both of the older men's directions. Tom was already standing by the door. She sighed again, resigning herself to his company. She hadn't quite returned to the events of a few hours ago, and she restrained herself from doing so now. Luckily, Tom didn't spare her a glance as they walked down the corridor towards the stairs. Hermione remembered that she had his cloak in her hands, and she extended it to him wordlessly.

"Oh, these," he said as he took them. He spared her a glance. "Are you quite alright?"

"Why?" she asked, descending the staircase.

"Well, it can't be expected that you are alright. Are you sure you wouldn't like to go to Madame Merriman's?"

"Yes," she answered, and Tom was quiet after that, for a while. After a while Hermione was disturbed by his silence, at the hiddenness of his thoughts. She wondered if he would try Legilimency to satisfy his curiosity.

Instead he turned to her and said, "Are you close to Dumbledore, then?"

"What? Yes, I suppose so." And, after a quiet length, she added, "He's a friend of the family."

"Yes, the family. The Potters are pureblooded, aren't they?"

"Why does it matter?" she asked, a bit more sharply than she'd intended.

"It matters here," he returned simply. "I should know."

"Yes, I know all about the Slytherins."

He smiled. "Prejudiced already, hmmm? Well, I won't try to persuade you. It's not just us, though, who care. Even in Ravenclaw. O'Bleeke is notorious about bloodlines."

"Oh really?" she said. She didn't fancy spending any time listening to anyone say anything about Mudbloods.

"Yes. Not that you need to worry." She thought she could detect a jealous undertone in his quiet voice. But maybe she was reading his history into it. They were nearing the entrance to Ravenclaw. Strangely enough, she'd barely been here, although she knew of it. Not many of the Ravenclaws had been good friends. "And with that introduction, I leave you. The password is 'Lux'."

"Are head boys privy to all the passwords, then?" said Hermione incredulously.

"Oh yes," he replied. "In case of emergency."

Her eyes narrowed and wondered if that was a policy that had been changed. Then she went to the door and said the password.

"Goodnight," he said.

Hermione looked back and nodded, and the door closed behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 14

Tom moved down the passageways, following the trails of magic he felt running through the school, intersecting at times and then becoming distinct, four kinds in total that he could sense. Or was predisposed to sense. It gave him pleasure to identify the types. It reassured him in his feeling of possessive knowledge about the school. A feeling which had been unsettled by the sudden appearance of Mione Potter. He was privy, through a certain creative use of combined magic, to every staff room secret, all the floo conversations he could care to overhear. And here was a girl, who had bypassed all security, covered in blood, even if she did reappear perfectly in order and calm in Dippet's office afterwards. Not even a whisper that this might happen. And he listened to the news. That skirmish in Alsace had come in, later, but... an Arithmancy project? The whole thing made sense, but only technical sense. There was something vital missing. And the vital element was always the most interesting and lucrative element of a situation.

She hadn't been present at all today, from what he'd gleaned from the Ravenclaw Arithmancy students. Had she had some injury that she'd been hiding? Well, she'd seemed whole, on both the occasions he'd seen her. He came to the foot of the staircase. He looked around for Malfoy. He found him at the first landing, above him. That wouldn't do. He simply regarded Malfoy with a pleasant expression on his face, and waited for him to descend. Malfoy was well aware of what was waiting for him if he didn't, and he hadn't managed to deflect Tom's Imperius yet. And, after a moment of standing up straight and looking dignified, as if to make a point about it, Malfoy did come down the stairs. Tom clapped lazily as they came face to face. "Bravo, Malfoy, Bravo. You really showed me, there, didn't you?"

Malfoy sighed and rolled his eyes. "You have my subservience before everyone else, must you demand it when we are alone?"

Tom grinned. It wasn't pleasant. "It's nice to make a point out of things, isn't it? You should be glad I don't use this opportunity to completely debase you in a way that won't come back to reflect on me, your esteemed companion." An Imperius was only as good as its user's creativity, and Tom was nothing if not creative.

Fear and a pitiful attempt to look blasé mixed in Pendrake's narrow face.

But Tom was already laughing and giving Pendrake a pat on the shoulder. He laughed loudly and Pendrake got the feeling that he was laughing at him, but he said, as he turned to go up the staircase, "But after all we know how it is between us, don't we? No need to dredge up old history, and suchlike, and so forth..." He took long strides up. Pendrake didn't find it hard to stay behind.

They met up with the old crew at the cusp of the Dungeons. Or the crew, at least, that had been started the year previously, consisting of many of the most promising Slytherins. Jean Lestrange, Judas Rosier, and Adrian Avery stood in casual conversation. They had the tousled, well-dressed look of the perpetually bored. True to form, Adrian was slouching all over the wall next to Geoffrey the Obsessed, who was chasing some unknown creature that Chester Lovegood had once insisted were nargles. He had some intricately made smoking jacket draped over his shirtsleeves. Tom smirked, and shrugged. Everyone, or most everyone, ate up practically everything any of them did. His methods of revenge and intimidation were a secret whisper on enough lips to keep the awful celebrity of his fifth year at bay. No one cared about that anymore. Not after his crew had been implicated in some of the crueler and more inexplicable pranks of last year. Hetty Brown had spent a week having toilets explode on her, courtesy of a liason Adrian had acquired in Ravenclaw. Tina Turpin had been knocked out and woke up in the Forbidden Forest. Elrod Jeffers was sent to Borgin and Burkes via a cabinet on the fifth floor. It had blown up when Slughorn bent down to examine it, spontaneously. Tom had rigged up the explosion, but as it was en route it simply destroyed the connection the cabinet maintained between the two places.

The Dining Hall silenced a bit at their arrival, which was customary, but there was an underlying current beneath the relative silence. Everyone seemed intent on discussing something, and Tom immediately saw what it was. The elusive Mione Potter was sitting at the Staff Table, in between Dumbledore and O'Bleeke. She looked small and young next to them, but for the fact that she was ignoring them and reading a book as she ate her dinner and took a cup of coffee, in much the same manner as an old man with his morning paper. She had a serious and rather pale look to her.

"Tom, do you know her?" asked Adrian. Tom noticed there was a large green snake on the back of his smoking jacket. He was more amused by it than he thought he should be.

"Tom knows all, doesn't he," said Judas, with a small note of challenge.

"Why yes, of course he does," Tom replied. Adrian and Jean looked impressed. Judas looked placated. Pendrake, as usual, looked like a mannequin.

"Well..." drawled Jean. "Tell us."

"Her name is Mione Potter, and we'll see what they tell you about her tonight," said Tom.

"If you know why don't you tell us what you know? If you don't, why do we have any reason to believe you?" Judas asked.

"Are you trying to bait me again, Jude?" asked Tom. "It's annoying."

The problem with Judas is he was old friends with Avery, who was infinitely useful in his own way.

"Anyway," said Adrian, "what do you reckon she's here for? And more importantly, do you reckon she's pretty?"

"I think so," said Jean.

"I think," said Tom, quietly, "that she's important." He gave Adrian a glare, and they didn't speak of her again, instead making plans for the Felix Felicis floating gambling operation. He'd discovered a foolproof way to reap the benefits of Felix. He and the crew all took it, and all bet on Slytherin. Luckily for them, Slytherin had won every game and the Cup last year. The team members had been checked thoroughly for signs of anything untoward, but the staff hadn't thought to look further into the matter. Dumbledore's preferred reaction to him now seemed to be some kind of appeasement, which would cost him when Tom got around to exacting old debts. The upshot was, Tom had more money than he remembered ever having, and had invested it quietly with an arbitrageur out of London. Avery's Ravenclaw contact, Alicia Silversmith, collected for her house, as well as for Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. Tom sent Judas to make the weekend's arrangements with her. Tom, unnoticed, banished a bit of cream onto the seat, unbeknownst to everyone else. He smirked when Judas returned to sit down. Professor Dippet interrupted their collusion with a call to attention.

"Before," said Headmaster Dippet, "we adjourn to bed, I would like to introduce you to a new member of the Hogwarts staff. Mione Potter," and here he gave her a nod, as she looked resolutely over the school, "will be acting in an advisory capacity to Professor O'Bleeke. She is apprenticing, and will provide administrative support." He looked around, seemed to remember something, and then said, "Welcome, Miss Potter." It seemed that the students were glad to finally have a young staffperson. There was, after all, no one less than half a century old on staff. There was a bit more conversation as the Hall cleared than usual.

Jean walked besides Tom. "So," he drawled, "have you thought anymore for a place to start our little... practice sessions?" Jean came from an old family line of dark magic and was very invested in making a name for himself alongside his forefathers. He had been the first person Tom had allied himself to after he had dealt with Malfoy last year. He had never been unpleasant towards Tom, even during the havoc Malfoy's little stunt had caused in fifth year. He also seemed to have a better sense than the others that Tom's powers were extensive and his ambition quickly becoming ruthless. He'd smartly always remained politic with Tom.

"I have been thinking about it, Jean. In fact, I have even found a place. However, it is not yet... prepared." His lips quirked at the thought of the site. It was an enormous cave on the Western side of the Forbidden Forest. It could be enchanted to resemble a castle, if he pleased. There were also wards he had to think on.

Soon, he would be able to begin his search for the ultimate form of control over life. He had grown obsessed with protecting himself in fifth year and over sixth year, insulating him against every magical force he could think of. But there was still that inexorable natural force, death. That great unifier of wizards and muggles. Magic had given him control during his muggle years. Perhaps it would be the source of ultimate control. He knew of the Sorcerer's Stone, already, but it seemed like an impossible item to procure. And, in magic, the maxim that held truest was that there were always multiple ways of procuring something. There were several forms of Shielding Charms, after all. With that, he recalled the Potter girl's reflexive shield. Skirmish in Alsace indeed. They weren't so far gone that you needed to be shielded like that. The Resistance didn't even know about Imperius. Tom knew of it due to information he had gleaned from a conversation he had overheard in Dippet's office when he was talking to the French Minister of Magic about Grindenwald.

It might be a signal pertaining to Grindenwald. Clearly, this girl had the kind of capabilities honed by warfare. How far they went, he was unsure about. But, if she could be kept ignorant of his intentions, she might be useful to him.

Hermione showed up to Professor O'Bleeke's class so early that even the Professor hadn't arrived. She wasn't sure if he would mind if she unlocked the wards, but she did so anyways. He might as well know her capacity. She settled herself at the table next to his podium, pulling out her books for the course, her notebooks sorted by Logico-Mathematical Aspects, Wand Movement, Diagram Grammar, and Theoretical Applications. On her right hand side she laid out the list of equations that had been proven since 1944. Dumbledore had included it in the packet he had handed to her with the note to his younger self. Most of them seemed to have been proven from the period of 1945 to 1947. She looked calmly around, her curls pulled into a loose bun, feeling clean and tidy and in control.

The first person in the class was not Professor O'Bleeke, but Picus Smith. The resemblance to Zachariah Smith was somewhat uncanny, although the boy had brown hair instead of blond. He kept looking up from his book to her questioningly, but she ignored him. Then came the Professor, who handed her the syllabus for the day, followed by a group of Gryffindors, a group of Slytherins, and then another group of Slytherins among whom was Tom. He moved in front, and was flanked, funnily enough, by a fair-haired brute and an angelic-looking, dark-haired athletic sort. She rifled through the files in her mind and tried to sort the group. Who was Avery, and who was LeStrange? Good lord, that one looked like a Malfoy. There were three others behind the front three. She turned back to Picus Smith, and a few more Gryffindors streamed through the door. She could tell people were starting to give her curious looks, so she sorted through her papers looking for anything related to the day's topic. A last Gryffindor entered, and Professor O'Bleeke slammed the door. She looked up. Tom was looking steadily at her. He leaned over to the Malfoy to say something, and Malfoy's face grew an empty little smile. Professor O'Bleeke cleared his throat.

"Good morning, class."

The class chimed a slightly lackluster "Good morning." She couldn't help but notice that Tom's voice was conspicuously absent.

"I have a bit of an announcement to make before I begin. Owing to a... little puzzle that I have decided to devote my time to, I will occasionally be missing class. This young lady will be substituting for me on those occasions, and will also be taking care of grading and proctoring exams. You can consider her my assistant, and go to her with all your needs. Above all, as you can see, I would like you all to leave me alone," he finished, but he said it with a smile, and the class tittered. Hermione looked steadily at the class, and not a few people returned her gaze. She avoided the one Tom was giving her. Professor O'Bleeke wrote a Caern tetratic stipulation on the board and asked the class to work it out, and the class pulled out their notebooks and started scribbling. Hermione went through the steps in her head. They had covered this three weeks before she had left her Hogwarts. This Hogwarts was uncannily familiar, as if it was a duplicate, instead of the building itself. Lately, she had begun to think of the 1944 castle as an imposter.

O'Bleeke rattled through a few more stipulations with the class. Hermione noted that he had that characteristic of accomplished Arithmancers and poor teachers, of rushing through his explanations, and skipping steps he considered obvious. As this was an advanced class, it didn't seem to slow the class down or burden the professor with overmany questions. The Professor stopped somewhat early to see if the class had any questions. Tom raised his hand.

"Yes, Riddle?" said Professor O'Bleeke. There seemed to be some kind of tension between the two of them, like a subtler version of the antipathy between Harry and Snape. Riddle had mentioned that the Professor had a certain distaste for students who weren't pureblood, and she wondered if that had anything to do with it.

"I was wondering if you will be covering the whole of Occluding Angles," Tom asked, "or if Miss Potter will be able to cover in case you are absent."

"Of course, of course, why would I accept an assistant who was unable to cover the whole of the subject?" O'Bleeke answered rather briskly.

Hermione tried not to betray a reaction at this question. Well-played, she couldn't help thinking. She knew he would be curious, having been privy to her entrance to the school. She had anticipated that he might try Legilimency. But instead of revealing himself in a potential attempt, he'd found a way to see if she would be able to sense and prevent Legilimency. Of course, he had also just revealed to her that he was willing to take steps to satisfy his curiosity, and Hermione was glad for the warning.

Hermione returned to her room with far too little in mind to do. She had finished grading papers while speaking to O'Bleeke about the more interesting implications of the list of equations proven after 1944, of the equations themselves and the nature of the equations as artifacts from the future. He'd so far betrayed no prejudices towards bloodlines, but she'd noticed in his grade books that Tom Riddle's grades did not reflect that he was by far the best student in the class. Only Alicia Silversmith had made an above average impression, including theoretical notes alongside the scientific ones. Tom had attached an addendum which linked up to points that he had done research in. It seemed like he did his homework in order to use it later, for quick research purposes. Much like she had done her homework, and still did her research.

Her current research on how to go about making a time machine was proving difficult at best. She fell into a blue and gold couch in her foyer. There was no more progress to be made today, but she wished she had something more she could do, instead of coming up against walls in her thoughts.

Dumbledore, the older one, had given her one of the few remaining time-turners and all the research that had been done on it. She had Sternbick and Hobblestein's notes from the experimental period of the time turner, as well as its rigorous testing period, in which Sternbick had shielded the Jurassic period after a mishap with an imported and rapidly exported triceratops. She had a list of use diaries from all Ministry'condoned usages. But a time turner had very little to do with the Time Machine.

The equations had this property, too. They had never been properly proved in the first place. Hermione realized that the explosion of proofs was due to the fact that she herself had given the proofs to Professor O'Bleeke, and he would show the results to his colleagues, who'd merely work out the proofs backwards and glean what they could from that.

Similarly, she'd need to work out the Time Machine backwards. She had a feeling that the equations would be important in some way, would play a strong role in the workings of the Time machine. And if that turned out to be true, Hermione would like to know who originally wrote them on that sheet of parchment Dumbledore had handed to her. It couldn't have been Dumbledore. Surely he would have told her if he'd played a part in proving them.

As for the rest of the workings of the Time Machine, Hermione had no footing to stand on. The Time Machine was thoroughly different than the Time Turner. First, the periods of time it shunted. Also, a time turner would follow you to whatever time you turned, but the Time Machine had sort of thrown her across time without following her there. It remained tethered to its own time. That had to mean something. Perhaps it had different consequences for time than a time turner. There was also the fact that Time Turners were so obviously manufactured for multiple uses. The preservation charms were interwoven too deeply not to be able to spot it. There was no reason not to think that the Time Machine had been built for a discrete number of operations.

So she hadn't any idea, really, what was necessary for the Time Machine's basic composition. There were no parameters to work within. Sighing, she stood up quickly and began to pace around the room. Then, setting her shoulders, she marched into her room and into a pocket on the bag in which she'd brought everything. She drew out the picture she'd taken of the battlefield. She could just make out Harry, a distant figure on a wooden stake. And that was where Ginny was fighting, she was sure, even though she couldn't find her. Still, bat bogey hexes abounded. She smiled despite herself. And Ron wasn't there.

You couldn't change the past. But what had Dumbledore said, about everything seeming so sure, in the afterglow of perception? Harry had to kill Tom. The prophecy deemed that he was the only one who could do it. And there was finally a way. And Dumbledore had said this was the only opportunity to do it, the time during which her picture had been taken. How many were dead in it? The multitude prevented her from picking anyone out, although Michael Corner looked like he was in a lot of pain. But Hermione had time on her hands. Who was to say she couldn't bring Tom to Harry before this? But she didn't. Hadn't. And how would she find out where he was? And what did she know about the future and the past, and how much of it was unchangeable? Humans rarely had an insight into that. Harry had told her that's what Firenze said.

Don't get involved with the centaurs, Dumbledore had said to her. Why had he said that? The negative imperative form made no sense, given that maxim, that you couldn't change the past. Had Dumbledore been trying to prevent her from doing what she had already done? But that didn't make sense. Or was he trying to get something through to her? Had she already gotten involved with the centaurs? It would, she thought, looking at the picture, make sense to. After all, who was she to leave such a pertinent resource unplumbed?

Well, she thought, getting up abruptly. At least she'd found something to do. Sleep seemed like an awfully expensive luxury now. She could at least spend this time fruitfully, researching centaurs. And with that she went, as she had so many times before, to the library.


	5. Chapter 5

It turned out that centaurs were much more fascinating creatures than Hermione had ever given them credit for being. Of course she remembered covering centaurs in Hagrid's class, researching their physiology and society as a matter of course. She knew they had refined what she considered more scientific ways of deducing the future, that their culture was consumed with time and the perception thereof, because they were unique among all animals in that they had different species of time perception among them. There were those for whom time went very slow, and who were the most analytic of the tribe, and those for whom time went fast, and even a tribe for whom time went backwards. Still, those born with these perceptions were minorities within the whole of centaurs. The greatest part of them had roughly humanlike perceptions of time, and it had become their job, in the case of the Forbidden Forest, to watch over and serve the others, and deal with all things human. The unique time perceptions were like thumbs to the centaurs; it allowed them to do things humans couldn't conceive of.

But this was all old hat to Hermione. What turned out to be very interesting to her were what their wise men had to say about time. She had been going through their writings, owing to the highly theoretical nature of them. The time was ripe for theory, since theory concerned the nature of time itself. Theory always came in handy at the beginnings of things. And Hermione needed to see if it would be possible to go back to before Ron died, or if that would be throwing her mission to fate to do with as it pleased. What was interesting to Hermione was an argument that had occurred between the great centaur scientist Arucio and the mystic Grell. Arucio maintained that as time was tethered to the movements of the stars, and as the stars had but single, predictable movements, so was time a single, predictable movement. Time was a singular entity; no two versions of it could exist, so it wasn't possible to change what had already happened, and the effect one had on the future was debatable. Grell, however, pointed out that magic (which the centaurs did not posses) proved an exception for many natural laws, and said that it was possible to change what had already happened, just as it was possible to change a cat into a teacup. Arucio maintained that magical laws, while an exception to natural laws, were still laws unto themselves. Even magic had limits.

That told Hermione nothing, of course, on how magical laws would apply to time travel. She felt herself to be in a suspended state of mourning. She wasn't sure if she should grieve. It might be possible to prevent herself from having to grieve at all. She couldn't drive away that last expression on Ron's face, or Harry's indiscernible figure in the crowd. But, in another sense, they were merely tucked away, waiting for her to come and sway things back to their balance.

A few days into her arrival at the second Hogwarts, Hermione came across the one-eyed witch who had proved so useless that night of the battle. The battle of Hogwarts, she was already calling it, even though it had started in Hogsmeade And her mind, still running around the rotary her studies had made, threw her into all the possible versions of how that night might have ended up had the witch let them through. Would it have been better to arrive in Hogsmeade? At least they would have had a place to retreat to. They might have prevented things from getting out of hand. Or they all would have died, and she would never have come back to put things right. The path that she had walked on to make it here was a narrow one, she realized. As unlucky as she had been, she had still been lucky. Remembering the curses hurled around her, and the one that broke through from Draco, she knew there was no way to deny it.

But it would be a long damn time before she'd be able to do anything, or know anything, and it wasn't fair that by doing a bit of time travel, she'd lost sight of the outcome. She should at least have the knowledge that she had definitely achieved her goal. It made her want to break something.

The one-eyed witch was the only one there to bear the brunt of her frustration. She aimed her wand at the statue and cried: "Reducto!" The statue shattered. In a very satisfying fashion. She blew air out through her lips, pointed her wand, and muttered a mending spell. Then she broke it again. It was very satisfying again. "Reducto!...Reparo!...Reducto!...Reparo!" She was starting to be satisfied by the rhythm the magic made, when she heard someone's throat clear behind her. She turned. Tom Riddle was leaning against a wall behind her, inspecting his fingernails. It seemed he had been there for some time.

"What- what are you doing there?" she asked before she thought to wait for him to speak.

"I might ask you the same question. In fact, some might say I have more reason to ask than you. What exactly are you doing so methodically destroying school property?"

"Well," she couldn't help but point out, "I wasn't only destroying it." She pointed at the statue, which was now whole.

"Yes, but still."

Hermione couldn't help but inspect him. It was somewhat impossible to reconcile this boy with Lord Voldemort. He was a Head Boy, for goodness' sake. Once she thought of Ron and Harry, however, she found it somewhat easier to remember. "It makes me feel better," she said finally, mainly to answer his original question, which she wasn't sure he still wanted an answer for.

He was inspecting her, now, and Hermione couldn't say it was comfortable. His eyes were rather uncanny. They seemed to have a hint of red at times, if only in the way light sometime glanced off them. "What do you need to feel better about?" he asked, quieter than his usual quiet voice. He seemed sincere. Seemed.

Hermione felt a flash of anger at the question. He wasn't going to let go of finding out about her anytime soon, and Hermione was strangely angry at the transparency of his question.

"That," she said coldly, "falls entirely outside of the parameters of this conversation." And she turned away from him and walked down the hall in the general direction of Ravenclaw.

She hadn't finished transfiguring her room to accommodate the makeshift library she'd compacted and brought with her from Hogwarts, and she needed to get at it to see if they had anything interesting about centaur theories. She walked quickly to her room, which since it was on the same floor as the secret passageway, offered her no obstacles. The next few hours she spent transfiguring her western wall to just the right size to house a quarter of her holdings, all of which were separated by alphabetical order and general category. The longest bit was a knob she had to enchant to switch one of the quarters with the others. Since the others were still compacted, one bit had to be enlarged, one compacted, and both displaced. It wasn't so much a tricky bit of magic as a longer chain of spells than she wanted to deal with. It took her another half hour to sort through the books she'd been originally looking for.

She went to dinner drained and cross, although her mood was much improved when a parcel arrived from the Daily Prophet. They mailed out evening supplements to keep the general citizenry aware of Grindenwald's movements. It was about the only news the wizards had of World War II. Still, they seemed to be a more credible organization than her old time's paper. There was an article about Alsace in it, on page eight. That convenient skirmish, Hermione remembered. The strangeness of Dumbledore's sending her not to the beginning of term, but near to a military engagement, struck her. It must have been the first military action to have occurred in France since the term started. It seemed she had been sent to this particular time for such a purpose. She noticed Dumbledore wasn't at the table anymore. He had disappeared early for the night. Suddenly, Hermione went white.

What was the implication of that, to purposely send a student back concurrently with a military engagement that was used to explain the bloody state of said student? The implication was Dumbledore knew she had come from a war, knew that Ron would die. Knew there would be a battle, and had sent her back just after the occurrence of another battle. He had known, all this time, she realized. Had he spared her the news because he hoped it wouldn't happen, or because he wanted her to go through with the plan? Still, the realization was startling. She left the Dining Hall early, the Prophet supplement under her arm.

She wandered through the halls, feeling focused on something highly abstract, something she couldn't quite make out. There was so much she needed to know. She reassured herself that she had, after all, found everything before. Although information often had an annoying habit of coming in its own time. Hermione stopped at the sight of a farmiliar series of bricks patterend into a flower. Dumbledore's office was near. On a whim, she turned towards it and knocked. The door took a few minutes to open. When Dumbledore opened it he looked tired.

"Come in, Miss-" he winked "Potter."

Despite herself, Hermone smiled.

"Is there anything specific you came to talk to me about?"

Of course. There were always specific things she wanted to talk about. "Yes."

"Would you like a spot of steamed berry juice before you begin? I have a batch on for Halloween this year, but there's plenty."

"Oh," she said, "Yes." It was, as expected, delicious. It made it easier for her to ask Dumbledore what he meant when he had talked about the time machine with her for the first time, when he suggested that the past might be changeable. There was a good chance he told her about it so she could ask him. As usual, Dumbledore was more in control of events than he appeared. It was probably the definitive factor in his power.

"It is," he said, after she had explained her conundrum to him, "an idea I harbored, when I was younger. I used to think that it was possible to change the past, that in fact it might have been changed already, and we simply don't know about it. But for the present that you are in, whether it is the present of your own time or the present of the past you go to, the present depends on its past. So in that sense, you cannot change time."

She hadn't honestly thought about that particular conundrum, and she couldn't see a hole in it but felt there must be some way to put a hole in it. Magic might still get you out of a logical rule. He had said it to her, anyway. It couldn't have been a slip. She didn't think the man was capable of slipping.

"Perhaps you change your mind," she said.

He smiled. "Yes, how interesting, I might."

She drained her cup of the berry juice. "Well, I suppose that's all there is."

"Goodnight, Miss Granger."

She left his office feeling better and worse than when she'd come in. She wandered the halls, unconsciously heading to the entrance of Gryffindor, which had a picture of a pale woman with a red nose in a black dress. It made her wonder where the fat lady was. She returned to her room and researched until she nearly fell asleep in her book. She didn't remember getting into her bed, but she got out of it in the morning. A dreamless night. All her nights had been dreamless and peaceful. Her mind probably realized she needed it. She'd slept a full eight hours, but it was a Saturday, and she only had to go to O'Bleeke's after breakfast.

The meeting was set up to go through certain arithmancy and transfiguration texts with O'Bleeke. They had just drawn up a skeleton of the time machine from sessions with Hermione's memory of it in the Penseive. It had led to a theoretical discussion that had gone on until midnight and during which Hermione learned more than in her entire second year. She hoped that Dumbledore had informed Professor O'Bleeke about her library, or else she would have explaining to do and rules to establish. It wouldn't do to let people from the past access texts from the future to excess.

When she did arrive at Professor O'Bleeke's, after a shower and breakfast and a bit of research, it turned out Dumbledore had indeed informed him.

"It is," he said reverently, "a fantastic notion, absolutely fantastic. Of course, I know our access will be limited, but the very idea is endlessly interesting. Imagine what use a Divination Professor could get out of it , really, in a case like that, it is a pity."

"Please don't get ideas, Professor," said Hermione, kindly. "They won't work out." And then it hit her. Imagine what a prize that library would be to someone who spent their time discerning the future. She hadn't even dreamed of contacting the centaurs yet; the ritual of introduction was intimidating, and she hadn't any reason to give them to talk to her. But the library was a bargaining chip straight from Heaven. She had a hard time restraining the glee that came with this information. She was bouncing on her toes and her voice was veering towards sing-songy the whole of the meeting.

When, finally, the meeting was over, the Professor positively drooling over the books he had been permitted, Hermione ran recklessly out to the southwest corner of the grounds, and streamed through the forest. The patch of pink cottontails was exactly where she remembered it. Their soft tops bounced off of her gently as she ran through them. Then there was that field of bucktooth wheat, a relatively uninteresting plant that just had to nubs at the top that resembled two front teeth. And then, she reached the edge of the unicorn patch, in plain sight of the Grasshunter Tree that marked the Time Machine's future location. She stretched out on the lawn and let the sun warm up the back of her head. It was done, a step had been put into action, and she was growing very confident that she could do it successfully. Clouds passed, shading the lawn from golden lights, which came through in passing strings. She remembered being here with Ron. Perhaps due to the presence of the unicorns, they had always been chaste here, not even holding hands. Often silent.

There was a movement in the corner of her eye and she saw two figures walking through a nearby trail. It was Tom Riddle and his friend, the Avery. The Avery boy was in between handsome and pretty. She'd heard some of the Ravenclaw girls giggling about him. He was perhaps more handsome than Tom, but he looked slighter and weaker walking next to him. There was but a hedge between herself and them, and it wasn't long before they noticed her.

"Having a doze, are we?" said the Avery, whose name was Adrian, she remembered.

Hermione flushed. "Minding out business, are we?" she called back.

"I wouldn't mind minding yours," he returned. Hermione was momentarily thrown. She had never been even slightly complemented by a Slytherin, and certainly none of them had ever... had he just flirted with her? She was unable to think of anything to do but drop her jaw.

Tom, still walking towards the school, smirked at her reaction. The bastard. "Entirely inappropriate, Adrian, really, I expect better of you." She couldn't tell whether he meant it or not. At this point, an adolescent unicorn foal, silver, had decided to wander towards the edge of the patch towards Hermione. It nuzzled at her hand, and Hermione pulled out a bit of grass for it to eat. She'd thought they'd gone, but she heard a laugh from their direction. Adrian was grinning. Tom cast a last distracted look back before disappearing into thicker foliage, Adrian behind him.

Hermione watched the figures retreating. Dumbledore, in her time, had stressed to her the fact that Tom was, for the most part, beloved by the Hogwarts staff, that he had been admired by the student body, that his appearance concealed very well what he was fated to become. Hermione had come prepared to see through him. And she could sense the dark undercurrent in his behavior, could see what others were obviously missing. And it was different than others she had seen, who had come to do evil. He had none of the snarkiness or overt unpleasantness of Malfoy. He was quiet, did not provoke or bully, and from what she had overheard, had bore bad treatment rather gracefully. Of course she knew this quietness spoke of a plan, a plan he might be putting into action, that would lead to far darker things than petty bullying or even the infliction of pain. Voldemort had not existed to inflict pain; the pain barely mattered. It had been a strategic tool Voldemort had used in his quest for power and control. The seeds of this, she did see in Tom. But Tom was a boy. And within a year, she would be responsible for his death, because that death bought Voldemort's death. Although she was determined to do it, she wasn't entirely sure if she was right.

Later, in the library, when she was looking for Gregor Tarsky's definitive book on centaur society, she wondered why she never saw Tom in the library despite the amount of time he obviously must spend there. As if to answer her thought, Tom emerged from one of the bookshelves, apparently on his way out of the library. He stopped when he saw her, and nodded.

"Miss Potter."

"Oh, hello, Mr. Riddle."

"I should apologize-"

"No, don't worry about it. I'll take it as a form of flattery."

"What?"

"Your friend," said Hermione.

"No, not that." He smiled a little. "Although perhaps I should apologize about that. Adrian is incorrigible. But I meant about earlier. I didn't mean to pry--well, obviously, I suppose I did, but I can't help being curious about you."

So he was laying it out on the table. He must have decided that she'd understood his attempts to find out what she was about. She hardly knew what to say to this. She didn't want to dismiss it, and she didn't want him to do further researches on his own.

"I mean, It's not just that I'm invested in the war. Frankly, that shielding charm of yours--when we first met--I haven't met anyone with those kind of defensive capacities, at your age anyway."

"Oh." Now she definitely didn't know what to say.

"You are the same age as the seventh years, right?"

"Yes."

"The thing is, I hadn't thought of the fact that you must have--well, don't consider this prying, but it must have been traumatic. You must have lost something. And I hadn't considered that until--well, you know. Afterwards."

For some reason, his little speech had brought her attention to him. And she couldn't restrain herself from a bit of her own impromptu research. "Do you care?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you care, or are you just trying out another tactic?"

As good as his face was at hiding things, some pale form of shock registered on Tom's face. "No--How could-"

"The shielding charm. What happened in Alsace. My role in it, and at this school. I know they mustn't be empty bits of information to you. I know they must have some kind of use to you. You'd not be so keen to ferret out more information if they weren't useful."

His eyes were unfocused, as though he was doing a lot of quick thinking. "Why would you think I'd find such a thing useful?"

"The ambition of a Slytherin is legend, and yours stands out among them."

"Oh, and you know so much about the houses already, when you've only been here for a few weeks?"

"My father is English," she lied quickly. "I've always known about this school."

" But you haven't always known about me. What makes you think your judgements are right?"

"I've always been rather good at reading people. It's a skill I've had reason to hone."

Tom stepped closer to her. His eyes flashed dangerously. "Or perhaps you've just got the measure of me from Dumbledore."

"And if I have?"

"Perhaps he's using the wrong ruler."

Amazingly, despite the fact that she wasn't sure if this conversation would somehow compromise her, Hermione still felt calm. "Perhaps. But I'm confident that time will reveal all there is to reveal."

"Yes," said Tom, who looked suddenly as calm as she. But then a line appeared between his eyebrows, and his mouth had a slight scowl. "Well, I suppose it will..." He gave her a penetrating glance, and nodded. "Good day, Miss Potter." And as he walked away, he seemed to regain his poise, but Hermione couldn't help being struck by the fact that he'd lost a bit of it in the first place.


	6. Chapter 6

Hermione turned over the horn in the light of her dormitory. It was slender and white--made from a fallen unicorn's horn. It was unadorned, and when she'd pursed her lips and put it to the mouthpiece for the first time, it had blown as clearly as if she had transfigured water into sound. It was a thing of beauty, and very few outside of the centaur population had it in their possession. But, as Hagrid had once been wont to say, you can find almost anything in the Hog's Head. And you got an especially interesting set when you went outside of the scheduled Hogsmeade weekends. Despite her collusion with Dumbledore and, in a lesser way, with O'Bleeke, Hermione was not above breaking a few rules if necessary. After all, you could take the girl out of Gryffindor, but not the Gryffindor out of the girl.

Going into the Forbidden Forest now more than ever constituted a broken rule. Dumbledore had taken the time to have a word with her concerning her formerly frequent excursions. Apparently the future Dumbledore was aware of her, Harry, and Ron's frequent trips into the forest and permitted them, having had a shrewd idea of what they were getting up to. And the Defense Diagram was and continued to be vital, just as all the other things that had come from rules she and Harry and Ron had broken and bent had been vital. Looking back to that moment in the Hospital Wing in third year, when Dumbledore had practically told them to break a few rules to save Sirius, Hermione wondered exactly how much Dumbledore had had a shrewd idea about.

Still, she did have a restricted access to the Forest, given that it might give her clues to her project. But going into the Forest near midnight with the sole intent of making contact with the centaurs was certainly nothing she had any hope of obtaining permission for. In fact, Hermione had a shrewd idea that her little word with Dumbledore was motivated by that last warning, a warning he'd surely given to himself. Don't get involved with the centaurs.

Hermione went to a clearing near the unicorn patch, which she knew was recognized by centaurs as a neutral territory, and blew the horn. She heard a faint rustle within minutes. It grew louder. She could hear not just hooves, not just leaves brushing against fur and skin, but the characteristic sound of leaves brushing over wood. She remembered it well. She remembered the encounter from fifth year very well. Her heart was pounding, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, knowing the centaurs could smell fear. She had prepared, after all. She knew exactly how to make contact. There was nothing to fear.

A band of centaurs broke through the remaining leaves and stood before her, arrows cocked at her. The centaur in front was a rich bronze color. She didn't recognize him at all. But there was Bane, on the left flank. He stomped the ground and snorted. The bronze one was far more composed.

"What is the meaning of this?" he intoned. His voice was deep and had a tendency to rumble. "That is a sounding horn. You know what it is for; you must also know we hold no meetings with humans. The penalty for such is death."

Not breaking eye contact, Hermione dropped to her knees. She had on her basilisk armor just in case. She took another steadying breath. "I am at your mercy," she said, and placed the horn and her wand in front of her.

"Why do you seek us out, foal?"

"She is no foal," broke in Bane. "She is fully accountable-"

"Enough-" said the bronze centaur, holding up a hand.

An idea blossomed suddenly, and she grasped it quickly. "Bane is right," she said. "I am fully accountable for my actions."

A silence fell among the group. Bane cantered to her, his arrow still pointed at her, only closer now. "Tell me how you know my name."

"I have met you before," said Hermione quietly, trying not to pay attention to the arrow. Or the fact that her face was not protected by basilisk armor..

"A lie!"

"You have not met me, it is true, but I have met you. Fifty years from now, I will meet you."

"She is a paltry human playing at foretelling the future," he said angrily.

"No," she said. "I do not have the Sight, nor have I ever had patience for human Divination." She thought she saw a bit of a smile on the bronze centaur's face. "I am from the future."

The silence that fell now was deeper than the last. The bronze centaur stepped forward. "A time turner," he said, but it was an inquiry, not a declaration.

"No. A Time Machine. One that brought me back fifty years."

"Even if that is so, which, little foal, I have reason to question, this does not answer my original question," he said.

"Please accept a gift in exchange for your time in hearing my explanation," said Hermione. She took a bag off her shoulder and lay it beyond the wand and her horn. "It is both a gift and proof of my story. I brought with me many books which have not yet been written. Among them are histories. They could prove to be vital data in your studies."

Now there was whispering among the group. The bronze centaur tilted his head to one near him, who had black fur and hair. He came forward and picked up the satchel.

"You have done your research," said the bronze. "Stand." Hermione did so. "What is your name, little foal?"

"Mione," she said.

He fixed her with a shrewd look, with not a little warning in it. "Your real name."

"Hermione," she said. "But I must ask that you tell no one, and address me as Mione, if it pleases you."

"Very well. I am called Griot." He bowed his head, and she did the same. "Now it is time, without any further delay, to tell me why you have sought us out."

It took a longer time to tell the centaurs her story than it had to tell Dumbledore. After all, what would come to pass had little significance for the centaurs, and a boy named Tom Riddle had none whatsoever for them. But Griot was very interested in the question of whether or not the past could be changed, and not a little pleased that Hermione was familiar with their philosophers and mystics.

And then there was the final question. The thing that only they had any hope of answering, however trivial a thing it may be. But it was the key to her, the only way she had of preventing Ron's death, of preventing all the deaths that had occurred on that last night in her own time. Seers had no control over what they predicted. The centaurs did have, although they rarely bothered themselves with individual's fates. They were the only ones who might be able to discover what even Dumbledore had been unable to--where Harry had been taken to after he disappeared.

-Hello, Lord Voldemort.

-Hello, Tom. It has been some time since you last wrote.

-It has been some time since I needed your advice.

-You did not create me solely for advice. Did you not create me to guide you, to discipline you, to drive out all that is hesitant and weak in you?

-Yes.

-Good. Now tell me what troubles you.

-I cannot seem to obtain the Potter girl's trust.

-And you sense that trust is vital.

-Yes.

-It is not.

-...I do not understand.

-You wish to know what she knows. You sense that it will help you in your search for power.

-Yes. She is an Occlumens.

-So you have tried to gain her confidence, rather than alert her to your interest.

-She has already guessed at my interest.

-Poorly done, Tom.

-I know. But it is done.

-It is because of more than information that you want her confidence.

-...Yes.

-Tell me.

-She is interesting.

-Yes, of course she is. Who else have you known with so many secrets?

-And she seems to know me.

-Know you?

-Yes. She seems to understand me. She guessed at my motives and distanced herself from me. She is smart, very smart. She had great ability, and talent, that is still not yet fully formed.

-She is a key to a lock, Tom, and no more than that. She is to be discarded once she has opened it. Think of chess. You play well because you do not care about the pieces.

-...Yes.

-I sense doubt.

-It's not that. It is that I do not understand what to do now.

-You say she knows you.

-Yes.

-You have tried to gain her confidence. It has not worked. Instead, provoke this knowledge she has of you. Incite her to give you information without knowing she is doing so. It is this, her knowledge of you, that is key to knowing how she is important to you.

-I understand, Lord Voldemort. Thank you.

-I am your very own self, Tom. Thank me by becoming what you strive to be, until I am your exact twin.

-Yes, Lord Voldemort.

Hermione surveyed the seventh year Arithmancy class as they worked though a proof Professor O'Bleeke had just assigned. She had always liked the Arithmancy classroom, and in the afterglow of her successful contact with the centaurs, she felt serene, as if the future had never happened, content that things had not yet come to pass and may come to pass more smoothly. The rustling of papers, the scratching of quills, and the keen light of the afternoon quite nearly made her content. She had even managed to ignore a certain black-haired head bent down over the proof. That is, until it came up. Tom was, as usual, the first in the class to finish. He didn't quite meet her unfocused gaze, now less serene; he hadn't since their confrontation. Hermione wasn't sure whether to regret it or not. Her response had been thoughtless and foolish, but it had served to distance him, and his presence had after all been growing somewhat claustrophobic.

After a moment, Tom furrowed his brow a bit and made a few more scratches on his paper; he usually used the extra time to suss out some of the implications if they were working on a proof. She knew what he was doing because she had done it herself. In fact, their study habits were annoyingly similar. Hermione steepled her fingers in front of her and looked down between them, now incapable of her formerly placid, wandering gaze. She reminded herself that even if he was there, would be there until the end, she had at least made the first positive steps towards accomplishing her goal, and if nothing else he served as a constant reminder of it.

Professor O'Bleeke clapped his hands together when he was ready to go over the solution. He didn't, in fact never did, ask if anyone had any problems, and one or two of the students obviously did. Hermione noted it, planning to speak to them after class if they still looked confused after they'd gone through the proof.

"Let's go over this one in steps, as the solution is a bit... abstract. Anyone?"

No one immediately volunteered.

"Riddle," he said, some tension in his voice, "you look exceedingly pleased with yourself. Dazzle us with your solution."

"The whole thing," Tom responded evenly, "or just the first few steps?"

"Well, if you're so eager, then yes, why don't you explain the whole thing to the class?"

Hermione bristled despite herself as Tom went over the first few steps. It wasn't that she felt any sympathy for Tom, but O'Bleeke's constant picking irritated her. It was as unprofessional in him as it had been in Snape, even if O'Bleeke was more genteel about it. Then she noticed, as Tom proceeded to the next step, that Tom was going about the proof very unconventionally. She quickly wrote down the steps he'd recited from his paper. Yes, it looked like it might work, but it wasn't anything like the standard solution. It drew on Velerian theory, which was a topological branch of Arithmantic theory, and the proof they were concerned with was polar... but the fields did have their overlap.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong," interrupted Professor O'Bleeke with evident relish. "As you can see from the confused looks on your fellow classmates' faces, that isn't at all how you go about it. You're not even in the right branch. If you were instead to..."

Hermione tuned him out and turned back to the proof. It seemed like it could work. She vaguely registered a quiet protest from Tom. Yes, it could work. Definitely. It was far more complex in terms of calculations than was strictly needed, making it a less elegant solution, but as Professor O'Bleeke had noted, the standard solution had some funny little abstract hurdles that some students never got over. Hermione herself had never gotten over them, because she thought the abstractions themselves were rather dubious. Tom's proof was actually a rather brilliant solution. She worked furiously to finish it, and check it, and looked up from her parchment in vague triumph. Tom was looking at Professor O'Bleeke with suppressed but resigned anger. Professor O'Bleeke was nearly done explaining the standard solution in his haphazard fashion. She waited for him to finish the last two steps. Picus Smith had his head in his hand. He'd been unable to jump the hurdle after all.

"Professor O'Bleeke," Hermione intoned as he drew the last symbol with a flourish. "The other solution is quite right."

"Excuse me, Miss Potter?"

"Mr. Riddle's solution--it's quite right. It's complex, but I've worked it through, and it doesn't have any of the complications with the abstractions."

"Well, then... go ahead with it, Ms. Potter."

Tom's lips thinned. It was an affront, after being publicly berated, to let someone else explain the solution. Hermione sighed. "Permission to use the board, sir."

"Go ahead."

All she really needed was that first step. She gave a last glance at her parchment and stood up at the board. She hadn't yet taught a class, or even proctored an exam, and she felt a bit nervous standing up in front of everyone. As she scrawled the solution on the board, however, she began to be lost in the equation. It was really quite beautiful. There were three places that required proofs to link the two branches, and each of those proofs had required no more than three or four lines. And there were quite a few less than obvious leaps of intuition. All of it rested on the brave bedrock of that first step which had linked the branches to begin with.

Hermione explained the less obvious bits as she encountered them. Years of helping her friends with their homework allowed to to find the clearest, concisest way to put things without too much trouble, and she was undistracted from solving the problem once again. When she turned back to the class, she saw no confusion on anyone's faces, and not a little bit of awe. No one had really had much of a chance to see her in action. If anyone had doubted that she deserved her apprenticeship, their concerns were likely allayed. Tom was not avoiding her gaze anymore. She turned quickly to Professor O'Bleeke, handing him the bit of chalk she had been using, and he smiled broadly at her.

"How wonderful of you to pick up on that and work it through so quickly. Well done, Miss Potter."

"It was the first step," she replied diplomatically. "Everything you need is in it."

"Well, yes. A creative solution, but not, to be sure, elegant enough to be used in place of the other," he said dismissively.

A sudden irritation flashed in Hermione. How many times had Snape brushed aside some particularly well thought out bit of her work? And why? Not just because she was a Gryffindor, but because she was Muggle-born. And she saw it clearly, now, in O'Bleeke. The prejudice Tom had spoken of.

"I think it was brilliant," she said, her irritation rather evident. Professor O'Bleeke looked taken aback. "There are three proofs smuggled into the thing, each of no more than three lines. How much more elegant can it be?"

"Miss Potter-" he said.

"I'm sorry, sir. It's merely my opinion on the solution." And with that, she sat quickly down, not daring to look at Professor O'Bleeke. The class was unusually quiet. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She had never talked to a teacher out of turn, not even Snape. And Professor O'Bleeke was her partner; it was vital to maintain a good working relationship with him. Dimly, she noticed that he had gone on with his lecture, which was fortunately cut off by lunch. Professor O'Bleeke swept coolly by her as she gathered her things. She shrugged it off, and headed for Picus Smith.

"Erm--hello, Picus. It looked like you had a bit of a problem getting the induction step," she said. Picus broke out in a relieved smile.

"Oh, yes. I just can't wrap my head around it, you know."

"Well, truth be told, I'm not sure it can be completely wrapped, actually. I've doubts about how valid it is. There's actually a proof of Kutz's that turns out totally different if you apply that sort of an induction step. Here's the more usual one, and it seems to work, although I still have some doubts." Hermione quickly jotted it into her notebook and handed it to him. He leaned over it for a moment, nodding.

"Yes, that does seem to make more sense."

"If you ever need any help, that's what I'm here for," she assured him.

"Thanks, Miss Potter. Honestly, I don't even go to O'Bleeke for help anymore. He makes me more confused when he tries to explain things."

"Yes, he can be that way," she said with a parting smile. Picus sat back down and took the induction step Hermione had written down and the standard solution. Hermione left the vacant room. Not five steps out of the door, Tom fell into step with her.

"Thanks for that," he said.

"Oh," said Hermione, suddenly finding occasion to regret her behavior even more. "It was in the spirit of intellectual verity more than anything."

"Perhaps forcing him to acknowledge the proof was, but you didn't have to say it was brilliant."

Hermione stopped despite herself, and looked, exasperated, at Tom. "Don't read too much into it."

"If you're worried I think you don't dislike me, don't. I know how true the Muggle cause is to the proud Potters. I just wanted to tell you there's no need to make a cause out of me. I had it sorted two years ago."

Hermione just looked at him. She hadn't any idea what to say. He'd read her pretty well, even if his interpretation had been misguided by her false history.

"I suppose you heard the whole thing from Dumbledore?" he asked, his expression somber.

"What whole thing?"

"My fifth year."

Her heart skipped a beat. Was he alluding to the Chamber of Secrets? No, he couldn't be. "I don't--I've no idea what you mean."

"Then how do you know I'm a half-blood? As far as I know no one speaks of it anymore, and if they do, I'd like to know."

"Why wouldn't they speak of it?" But he was right. She'd never heard anyone reference that bit of information about him, and people did tend to talk about Tom Riddle.

"I've taken steps to ensure it."

"Steps?"

His voice because cold and smooth. "Would you stop repeating fragments of what I'm saying and please tell me who told you of my lineage?"

Hermione answered the only way she could. "Dumbledore."

"Yes, I thought so. He told you a lot about me, didn't he? All pity and wariness, wasn't it?"

"Tom, I don't--"

"Yes, don't. I don't need sympathy or pity, and for that matter I don't need any judgement about how I took care of it either. I'm not proud of being a mudblood like some of the others--frankly, I'd be happy if there weren't any such things as muggles, but all the same it does require extremities to make a place when there isn't one there for you."

His face could rival Victor Krum's for intensity, that was for sure. "Extremities," she said softly, "tend to do more damage than patience, and clear-headedness, and a bit of strategy do. You may find extremities have a way of carving out a more precarious place than the other way does." She let out a breath, and stepped back from Tom. She could practically feel his warmth, and he was five feet away from her. His expression had softened, bore evidence to listening, and she wasn't even sure what they were talking about. She nodded. "Good day, Mr. Riddle," she said. And couldn't help notice the look of distaste at hearing his own name.

Tom smiled as he watched her depart. Like tended to draw like; the way to obtain information, particularly when you didn't want it known that it was being obtained, was to offer information. Although he wouldn't have anticipated Mione would provide such an opening. Lord Voldemort had been right; prying into what she knew of him would be interesting. For all Mione Potter seemed to know him, understand him, she was ignorant of Pendrake Malfoy's little stunt, ignorant of Tom's use of the Imperius curse, and ignorant of the greater part of his doings with his companions. And that certainly didn't match up with her wariness and aloofness, not even if Dumbledore had provided a warning. And that bit about extremities, as though she were alluding to something... And she was right, wasn't she? He'd read Machievelli. If one uses extremities to secure a place, one is obligated to continue their use to secure it. And then, in a flash, when Mione's figure was small in the distance, two puzzle pieces came together, and he could see a partial image of the whole.

Whatever Mione Potter had come to Hogwarts for, it had something to do with him.


	7. Chapter 7

Hermione tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for Professor Dumbledore to open up the door to his office. She'd headed there straight after her... conversation, if it could be called that, with Tom. There was certainly something she was missing, since nothing he'd been referencing and implying really fit with what she knew about him. What had happened in fifth year besides the Chamber of Secrets? As if in answer to her question, Professor Dumbledore opened his door.

"Hello again, Miss Potter. Do come in."

"Thank you," said Hermione, entering into the room and sitting in the chair across from her desk without realizing until she'd sat that he hadn't even offered it to her. Oh, well, she was a bit tired of social intricacies after dealing with the centaurs.

"How goes your work on the time machine?" he asked, proffering a bowl of candy. Hermione took a lemon drop from the top.

"Well enough," she said. We've at least determined the structure of it, although we have yet to implement it. We can't determine whether or not the platinum requires enchantments--" She waved her hand distractedly in the air, cutting herself off. "Professor Dumbledore, what happened in Tom's fifth year?"

Professor Dumbledore furrowed his brows. "I thought you knew about all of that."

"The Chamber of Secrets, yes, of course. But Tom--well, he was talking about something else that happened during fifth year, something connected to his being a half blood."

"I do recall," said Dumbledore, "That was an exceptionally difficult year for young Tom. The Slytherins... well, even the other houses, tormented him a great deal."

"Yes, but what was different about that year? Hadn't they always known he was half blood?"

Dumbledore looked thoughtfully up to a corner of his ceiling. "Do you know, Miss Granger--Potter, I'm sorry... I don't know if they did. Professor Slughorn would know better, since he is their head of house. But I hadn't noticed anything happen before fifth year."

"So he'd managed to hide it from them?"

"He is the first half-blood who has made it into Slytherin in centuries. The last one who did... well, the last one who did committed suicide."

"How would they have found out, then?" she asked.

"Of that, I'm not quite sure."

"Professor, another thing he said--I haven't heard a single soul say anything about his status. Why would that be, if everyone tormented him during fifth year?"

"I have wondered myself at the exact nature of it. But I do have a bit of a shrewd idea. When it started to happen, I did all that I could to put a stop to it. Not only for reasons of ethics, though of course those were present. But I could see that the constant hexes, the attempts to poison him-"

"_Poison _him?"

"I never found evidence of a fatal poison, but as I said, it was indeed a very bad year for Tom. But as I was saying, Tom seemed to be using the opportunity to hone his skills, and that I worried about."

"It sounds like he had good reason to hone his skills."

"Yes, to be sure. Still, it disturbed me that he never betrayed any emotion at his predicament, that he never sought help. It was not... the normal response."

"Right. And then?"

"Well, I'm sure the Chamber of Secrets did play a role in Tom's sudden change of status. But it was too sudden, far too sudden. And, by the end of the year, he was seen about with the group you see around him now. To be sure, something happened between them. And the year after that, we began to see incidents perpetrated against students, which we were never able to solve. But I couldn't help noticing that all of the victims had tried to hex Tom at least once."

"Oh." So that was what he'd meant by extremities. At least, that was partly what he meant. There was definitely more to this picture.

There was a noise by Dumbledore's Floo, and she could see a man's head in the fireplace. It was a rather narrow, sallow face, and as it called for Dumbledore, she could hear a distinctly French intonation in his voice. Dumbledore stood at once and approached the fireplace.

"Ah, Mr. Knauss, how nice of you to pop in."

"I 'aven't any nice news, I am sorry to say," the head replied. "We 'ave discovered the Resistance fighters 'oo disappeared in Alsace... what ees left of them, that ees. Our eenvestigaters 'ave determined they deed not die naturally--"

"Erm," said Dumbledore. "One moment, if you please, Mr. Knauss." He turned back to Hermione. "I'm sorry I can't give you more information, Miss Potter."

"Oh, that's all right, Professor. I know more than I did." She could see the head in the fireplace inspecting her, and she quickly rose to go. "And who knows, perhaps it might be useful?"

That said, she thought as she left the office, she certainly wasn't done pursuing this line of investigation. As far as she was concerned, all knowledge about Tom Riddle was pertinent to her mission. The question was, who could she talk to about it? His friends were out of the question, and anyone who wasn't somehow close to him wouldn't know the first thing about it, only whatever rumors there were.

The answer arrived with dinner that night. She was reading through the Prophet supplement, as was her custom. She put it down for a moment to take a sip of pumpkin juice when she saw Adrian Avery cross the Great Hall over to the Ravenclaw table. He approached a girl with silvery-blonde hair reminiscent of a Veela. Alicia Silversmith, she remembered. He bent his head and talked to her for a moment, and parted after a few minutes of conversation, departing with a kiss on her hand.

So Adrian was involved with a Ravenclaw? How convenient. And here Hermione was thinking Fred and George's extendable ears had been languishing entirely too long in her bag of tricks.

.((0)).

Tom and Jean walked through the Forbidden Forest at well past midnight, which was the only time they had been able to leave the Slytherin dungeons without being noticed by either staff or student. Jean was the most useful of Tom's companions, and Tom had decided to reward him with the first glimpse of the quarters for their long anticipated meetings. Of course, Tom did have a bit of a price in mind for the gift, although Jean would never be the wiser.

The various colors had drawn closer together in the dark, little to distinguish one shade from the other, and all appearing saturated and dark. It was a new moon night. Tom had always thought it funny to call the phase during which the moon was absent the new moon. But then, new things were often undetectable at first, taking not a little while to wax into a definite object.

He looked over at Jean, whose lips were drawn wide into a toothless, predatory smile. For him, things were falling into place. His success in name and status had gained a guarantor. Unlike Jean, Tom had spent his whole life putting things into place, rather than waiting for them to fall. Not one single good thing had happened to him that he hadn't been responsible for. Though he'd once wished for something good to fall into his lap, he now knew it was a foolish thing to wish for. Good things that you didn't control didn't always remain good. There was no reason, yet, to turn the tide for Jean. So long as Tom was obeyed, he would provide in spades what Jean wanted. But from now on, Jean's good fortune was entirely dependent on how much his desires coincided with Tom. Jean turned to him. "Is this just a cursory visit," he asked, "or will you teach me something?"

Tom smiled in return as they took a left turn at a fork, heading west for the cave. "Oh, yes," he said. "I'll teach you something you alone can have." A few more yards, and he added, "But I must ask a favor in return."

Jeans eyes were wary, but they were tempered with hunger. "Tell me the price, and I'll decide if it's worth it." The cave was visible in the distance.

"Your family," said Tom. "I have heard their name in connection with Grindenwald."

Jean turned to him. "It is no accident."

"I would like to know about him."

Jean paused as they walked further. "You know the sort of thing you are asking for requires a certain responsibility? I cannot have any of this come back to me."

"Of course, my dear Mr. LeStrange, of course."

Jean squared his shoulders. Tom had long ago decided his chief weakness was an overarching preoccupation with what his family would think, especially when it came to his father. It cost Jean something to tell him what he would. "My family has a great deal of certain... artifacts. Although Grindenwald doesn't offer the highest monetary prices, he offers them things that no one else can. Chiefly a certain measure of influence at the French and German Ministries." The cave loomed large now; there was but a short way to go before they had to start climbing. Tom smirked a bit at the thought of the weedy, wheezy Lestrange making his way up to the cave.

So the French Ministry had fallen, then, and was but a false puppet. England had known about the German Ministry's fall for some time. "Go on."

"I have a second cousin in Germany now. He plays an active role in Grindenwald's campaign, although I'm not sure what he does."

"What is his name?"

Jean shot him a wary look. "His name is Johannes Kinderkindle."

Tom nodded. "Good, good." The terrain was becoming rough. "Do you know of any of your parents' contacts?"

Jean stopped now. "Tom... What exactly are you going to be teaching me?"

"Oh," said Tom, stopping too, "You'll see. I think you'll be pleased." He stepped towards Jean, looming over him. Tom was the tallest in the group, and he could see the wariness in Jean's eyes draw nearer to fear. "It's quite useful, actually, as much a skill as a spell." He lifted his chin, looking down at Jean as his voice smoothed more than was normal. "Now tell me their names."

Jean's gaze quickly flickered away from Tom's to the path that led up the mountain.

"Yes, let's also climb, shall we?"

Jean paused, and drew a breath, and followed Tom into the thicket. "I've seen a man named Julian Hextisk the most. I think..." Tom could hear Jean struggling to use the thicket to pull himself up, "I think he's their liason- " a strained breath-- "for the artifacts... Patricia... Parkinson. She deals... with their--" another labored whisper behind him as Jean struggled to maintain Tom's pace--"With their affairs at the French Ministry. Paul Theroux... he's at the French Ministry as well... Etienne Mellours..."

"He's Undersecretary to the Prime Minister, isn't he?"

"Yes... He uses... a new spell... I forget which, to--" a strangled gasp--"control him utterly."

Tom knew which spell it was. The Imperius which had come in so handy with Pendrake. "Who else?" he called behind him. Jean was a bit far off, and Tom waited a bit for Jean to struggle up to where Tom was.

"I know... the Zabini woman, the black widow... attends some of our dinners. I think... she also does work... covertly. The... Notts..."

"But they're just in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office."

"Bombs... make it look like the... Muggle War."

Oh, that was very clever. And ironic. He'd have to remember the usefulness of the Notts, lack of stature though they did have.

"That's... all I can think of--wait... Frederick Knauss... I saw him speaking to... Father once, but... just once... I'm not sure what... he does."

Hmm. Tom heard that chap talk to Dumbledore a few times. He worked with Moody. So the darker elements had even infiltrated the side of the light. How very interesting. He paused for a moment, and waited for Jean. "Very good, Jean. Why don't you go ahead. It's getting a bit treacherous, and this way I can keep an eye out for you."

Jean, pale and sweating, nodded and went ahead. Tom followed him easily. Wizards were always so physically underdeveloped, as though they had forgotten they had bodies at all. He smiled, thinking of his information. Now he had multiple avenues of research and planning to do. He wanted nothing to do in service to Grindenwald, of course. He'd learned well enough by watching his companions that being in service to someone powerful was a foolish way to gain power, and it was certainly no guarantee of perfection. Truth be told, he hoped Grindenwald would fall, sooner than later, but if the side of the light needed a nudge, he'd like to be prepared enough to provide it for them. Tom followed Jean in slow silence for a bit, until the boy was thoroughly worn out. Then Tom took out his wand and aimed a careful, silent _obliviate_ at Jean's back. They made the rest of the way up to the cave, the torturous path gradually giving way to a staircase Tom had transfigured out of the stone. The door was disguished to look like a wayward boulder. Tom walked through it and waited for Jean. Then he lit the space. He heard Jean gasp beside him.

It was a nice bit of work, after all. Another set of transfigured stairs curved along the smoothened earth walls. Along them ran pockets in the walls that shelved books, or potions, and several of the more interesting things he'd picked up from Borgin and Burkes with his invested money. The floor was covered in a dark, smooth carpet, which was a dark green worked through with an intricate silver pattern. Several owls that he'd transfigured from stone flew about, vanishing and reappearing every once in a while. An ingenious form of secure communication, he thought.

Jean turned to him. "Is this just a cursory visit," he asked, "or will you teach me something?"

"Oh," Tom replied. "I already have, in a way."

.((0)).

Hermione couldn't help but think it was adorable that Alicia and Adrian had met in the Restricted Section of the Library. She had managed to follow them secretly enough for most of the day before they had secluded themselves from friends and eavesdroppers. It was only then that Hermione wished to hear anything they might say to each other. She ran a piece of flesh-colored string to nestle between two dusty volumes and checked the earpiece.

"When will you realize that your efforts to make an intellect of me can only end in failure, my love?" Hermione heard both a loud and muffled version, and nodded to herself as she walked a bit further away. She quickly put an invisibility spell on the string and sat at a desk.

"So long as I prevent you from being a vacant-headed pretty boy, you prat," came the reply. Hermione's lips twitched, and she pulled a book out of her bag and opened it to a random page. "What are the major properties of wolfsbane?"

"Hair as pale as white gold, skin like alabaster, and those unnerving pink diamonds you have set beneath your brows."

The major properties of wolfsbane, Adrian, not the most majorly clichéd compliments you've given me."

"But the test isn't for weeks, Alicia."

A tutting sound came through the string.

"Then go find someone to flirt with, Adrian, because I for one intend to study."

There was a disgruntled sigh, and then: "Well, I think Tom did mention something he might need from our liason in Ravenclaw..."

"I'm serious, Adrian. I'm going to study. I can't just jump up every time you happen to remember something Tom wants from me."

"Fine, then, why don't I at least tell you now so I won't have to interrupt your torrid affair with books?"

"Oh, don't be mad, dearest. I'm sure I can find some time tonight to pursue my less intellectually inclined occupations..."

"You always come through for me when it counts."

"Indeed. Tell me your little favor..."

"He wants to know about O'Bleeke's apprentice, Mione Potter."

Hermione nearly dropped her end of the string. Lord, didn't he know when to quit? "Well, she's brilliant, and aloof, and just a bit pretty, don't you think, Adrian--I've seen the looks you give her. Does Tom fancy her?"

"I've never seen Tom fancy anyone. He says she's important. He thinks she's here for some other reason than to apprentice with Professor O'Bleeke."

"Of course she is, a mind like that at our age."

"Do I have permission to flirt?"

"When don't you have, dear boy? You know that as long as I have space you can use yours however you're inclined. Speaking of which..."

"I'm taking the hint, honestly I am. Until tonight, my love?"

"Yes, yes," came the distracted reply. Hermione could picture her waving Adrian away, and she heard a chair scraping across the stack of books. She unenchanted the string and started to twine the string around the earpiece. Not exactly what she was looking for, but she certainly knew to be wary of Alicia Silversmith. She let out a sigh of frustration, half-tempted to go and put a hex on Tom. Really, he never stopped. Not that this was unexpected. Well, two could play at the game he was playing, couldn't they?

Tom watched the two swirling figures in his hand intently as he listened to the recording he'd managed to get from Dumbledore's office earlier that evening. He recorded the conversations in Dumbledore's office with a latent excipio charm that activated upon the man's presence in the office. It was an ancient listening spell used by servants during the renaissance for them to better help their masters; the particular mode of the spell made them unable to relate their findings to others. The obscureness of it, and its limitation, made it the perfect spell to use in the always suspicious Dumbledore's office. He would never think to look for it because he would assume the listener would want to impart their findings to another. Funnily enough, there had been a glitch tonight; there was a missing patch and the conversation he'd got had a chunk missing from its beginning. But then, his earlier use of the subausculto, which was exceedingly rare, though obviously for purposes of spying, had been detected and counteracted some hours before the Potter girl's arrival, so Tom had reason to suspect that Dumbledore enacted extra spells when she was present in his office. He'd definitely have to think of a way around that.

"Zere were twelve bodies, Monsiegneur Dumbledore," the head in the fireplace was saying--Knauss, the man Jean had mentioned. "Zat accounts for all zee Resistance fighters eenvolved. I am sorry, but zere were no survivors in Alsace."

"If that is so, it may be a good thing. I wouldn't like to think of where any unaccounted for persons might be if they weren't dead. Still..." said Dumbledore's figure. "I have an agent now in Provence, she is an expert at Transfigurations, and also gifted in other areas. I'd like for you to let her take a look at the bodies."

This was the second time he's summoned the smoky green figures to replay their conversation. No survivors on the Resistance side... Perhaps the Potter girl hadn't been involved with the Resistance at all? Perhaps she'd been a civilian, so to speak. He certainly didn't see her on Grindenwald's side. But she'd surely been involved, and was more likely than not to be on the Resistance side... Dumbledore had asked to have a Transfigurations expert inspect the bodies, though. It was entirely possible that Mione had created a Morbicorpse in her likeness. He certainly wouldn't put it past her evident skills. However, there was still an element out of place, that might be put in place upon further investigation, and probably would make the story much more interesting. And such a telling detail was more likely than not related to whatever it was Mione Potter was really at Hogwarts to do.

"... Next Hogsmeade weekend at the Three Broomsticks, then?"

"I weel see you zen, Monseigneur," Knauss replied.

It was the perfect opportunity, Tom thought as the figures flickered. Knauss seemed to be the point where his interest in Grindenwald and his interest in Mione Potter intersected. He would be sure to look up this Knauss character. He had to learn enough about Knauss to exploit this brief window of opportunity. He didn't notice a small piece of flesh-colored string suddenly appear, as though it had been previously invisible, and retreat past the crack in his door.

Outside the door, Hermione twined the string of her invisible ear around the earpiece once again, barely suppressing a grin underneath her invisibility cloak. She almost wished she could throw open the door to Tom's quarters and announce he'd been had; she couldn't help but be terrifically pleased with herself. After all, she'd just gotten an eye for an eye, and that with one of the most brilliant students to grace Hogwart's premises... Excluding herself, of course. And, she thought, looking fondly at the string, perhaps the twins.

Just as suddenly, as she waited inside the Slytherin dormitory door for someone to leave, her smile faltered. She was really being a little idiot, actually, when she thought about it. Getting foolishly competitive with Tom, as though he was a particularly arrogant Slytherin, instead of a threat to her future and to all those who she loved. In fact, Hermione realized, she was doing a good job threatening her future herself, letting herself be driven by competitiveness and petty vengeance. She was underestimating Tom for the same reasons everyone else ever had; because he was a young boy, whose depths were never exposed in any way at the surface. She hadn't learned the lesson all the others had provided for her, couldn't reconcile the dissonance between his two selves, couldn't bring herself to hate him as she hated Voldemort.

But then, she had never hated Voldemort, any more than she hated a natural disaster. She'd simply known he must be stopped. His earlier self was the one she felt anything about. You had to know someone to hate them, after all. And what she felt wasn't the venom she had in her heart for someone like Draco Malfoy. It was a mixture of annoyance, and fear, and not a little bit of curiosity, the burning need to know how he could become what he became, how he could decide to seek it out from the point at which she saw him.

A Slytherin girl with a morose expression came to the door and opened it, and Hermione darted through the small space there was for her to escape through. She squared her shoulders under the cloak, vowing to go about things more rationally.

.((0)).

-Hello again, Lord Voldemort.

-Good evening, Tom. I trust you have heeded my advice?

-Yes.

-Tell me what you have learned.

-Mione Potter is not here to work on an Arithmancy project.

-What is she here to do?

-I don't know, but I have a strong suspicion that it has something to do with me.

-Yes, that has the right ring to it... Still, there is much missing.

-I don't have much of a chance of getting more information from a direct source. I cannot access Dumbledore's office when she is present, so I have no way of overhearing their conversations.

-He is connected, of course. He has always secretly hated you.

-I know.

-Then she is not the only key. You should dispose of her before she becomes a threat, if she cannot provide more information.

-I think that would be a mistake.

-Oh? Or are you afraid to do what is most expedient?

-I do not think it would be expedient.

-Do tell me how this is so, young Tom. It should be most amusing.

-First, it might cause Dumbledore to act before he otherwise would. The Potter girl I could defend myself against. I know Dumbledore is stronger than me. I prefer the girl as my adversary, if she stands between us.

-Perhaps you should grow stronger, then.

-Furthermore, I have begun to procure information from a more indirect source. Mione is connected to Grindenwald insofar as she is connected to Alsace, and I have found someone who can provide me with vital information concerning the both of them.

-...

-Lord Voldemort?

-You call her Mione.

-It is her name.

-Hmm.

-What is it?

-Careful, Tom.

-Of what?

-Of how willing you are to keep from disposing of her.

-I think she is important.

-Oh, I am sure you do.

-There's no need to make implications, Lord Voldemort.

-I should hope not. I should hope things are clear enough in your mind. I should hope you will not let your emotions hold sway over you. I should hope you will continue to progress under my tutelage, rather than regress despite it.

-As you have said, Lord Voldemort, you are no more than myself. I have created you to guide me. I did not create you to order me.

-You presume much, boy.

-Oh?

-Yes. I am... more.


	8. Chapter 8

The light filtered into the forest dappled the clearing. Hermione supposed she was the first human to enter it. And the first to engage in their introductory rituals. One step into the centaur's meeting place. One, the number from which all numbers come. "What is your name?"

"Mione," she replied. Griot had agreed that she could use that name during her greeting entrances into the meeting places, lest it drop on less than friendly ears.

Two steps, now. Duality, and combination, and opposition. "What is your intention?"

"To learn what I can of the future from minds better equipped to understand it than my own." It was always necessary to imply they were superior to her, especially when Bane was present. Strangely, it was much easier to bear than pureblood claims of superiority. She supposed it was due to the fact that the centaurs were regarded as inferior by many wizards.

Three steps. Synthesis. "And what is your token?"

"Another book. This one is a modern history of the centaurs, written by one of your own." The first one had been a history of wizards; the second a history of muggles. She knew they had been waiting for this one, but the first bits of information were, to

her, the most vital.

"It is well," said Griot. "You may enter." A cool breeze entered the clearing with her. They were fully in autumn now. In the mornings there was frost on the ground. Hermione had been in the past for a full month. She had begun to forget the exact timbre of that last battle; its afterglow was nearly fully faded.

She sat across from Griot, and two other centaurs. Both were white and silver with age. She knew they were perceivers, those with different impressions of time.

"Tell us again about your friend Harry Potter." Other centaurs were mingling about in the meeting place, some watching with interest, others paying no mind at all to the proceedings.

"He disappeared on September the 25th and reappeared on February the 21st. Between those times, no one ever found out where he was. Not even Dumbledore."

"Eerht semit si eno-ytnewt. Evif semit evif si evif-ytnewt," muttered the centaur on Griot's left. Griot nodded at this.

"Do you know anything else about his disappearance?" asked Griot.

"He was kept by Voldemort."

Griot nodded.

"Voldemort exists by half, now, not far from this," said the centaur on the right.

"Yes," said Hermione. "He is who Tom Riddle will be, in a decade or two."

"No," said the white and silver centaur. "They exist apart, for now. They are linked, but separate."

Hermione pressed her lips together at this, unsure what to make of it.

" Sdrow emas keeps yeht. Eno lilts si retal eno dna erofeb eno. Eerht si eno era owt," said the centaur on the left. Hermione realized now that he was speaking not another tongue, but backwards. How interesting.

Griot leaned his head back. "Hmm. Yes. They speak the same words. A moment, if you please, Hermione, Iado. I would like to speak further with Uru." He turned back to the backwards-speaking centaur. Hermione and the other white and silver centaur, Iado,

rose. Hermione walked along the edges of the meeting-place, knowing that most of the centaurs here were still suspicious of her presence. After a moment, she realized that Iado was walking by her.

"Oh," she said, looking at him. "I-I should thank you. For helping me."

The centaur turned to her. "You have experienced war," he said softly. It was not without accusation, but perhaps that was a projection of Hermione's. She would always carry her murder with her. "I can see that you have seen blood come away from a body violently. It is in your eyes."

A breath caught in Hermione's throat, and she turned away from him. Her lips moved, but didn't seem able to be able to find the appropriate sound to make.

"We centaurs have never known war, except at the hand of the humans. For them, it is inevitable. They struggle so hard to separate themselves from the animal parts of themselves that, when those parts arise again, they arise stronger than in animals themselves. That is what you humans call evil."

Hermione nodded.

"You are not like that. You have caused death, and learned from it. You strive for peace as others strive for war. You have lost much for it, nearly all you have."

"The thing of it is, I might not lose-"

"No," said Iado, "though you may regain them, you have still lost them. You will lose more, little foal."

Hermione turned back to him, tears breaking over her cheeks. Iado stretched out a pale hand to touch the tears. His hand was cool on her cheek.

"Let yourself cry, and let yourself go on. For you will do what you mean to do, accomplish every last bit that you hope to. You must remember this. Your

sacrifice will be worth it."

Hermione swallowed a sob. It stuck in her throat. "And what do you see, Iado?"

"The thing most precious to us," he replied. "The future."

"Can you tell me-"

"I can tell you what the future holds for you, because you are standing before me, or as much as is safe to say. I can tell you the greater portions of the movements being set into motion, but I can only tell you the individual motions if the individual is before me. There is no other way for me to focus my perceptions."

Hermione drew in a shaky breath. "Oh."

"And now, little foal, it is time to return to Griot."

Hermione brushed her tears away with the back of her hand and followed Iado back to the place where Griot and Uru sat. Griot was watching them expectantly. Iado resumed his place to the right of Griot, and Hermione sat once again before them all, trying to calm herself.

"There is a way," said Griot, "to tell where your friend will be."

And then the tears, once again, the foolish things, broke free, and a dozen sobs rose up from her throat. "Thank you," Hermione managed. "Can you. Tell me?"

"We can find the place where the captured one is, if you bring the capturer to us. For all the things he might or might not do are already in his head."

This may not end up shaping up as the best day, Hermione couldn't help thinking as she walked into O'Bleeke's office not two hours later. She had been dreading this meeting; O'Bleeke had been ignoring her ever since the now infamous class wherein she had defended Tom's solution. She sighed when the professor did not turn from the model of the Time Machine glittering in the air before him. A pensieve sat to his side; he must have been comparing the model to her memory. The model didn't look exactly right, although Hermione wouldn't have been able to explain it if asked. If she looked at a particular metal line on the machine, it matched at all the right points; intersected with the other lines where it should. Still, something about the whole of it (Gestalt came to mind, from her muggle readings) didn't mesh with her memory, which hadbecome remarkably sharp where the time machine was concerned, due to her repeat viewings of it in the pensieve.

"Professor O'Bleeke," she offered tentatively.

He turned. "Oh, Miss Potter. As you can see, I've got the basic architecture of it down."

"Actually, there's something a bit off about it, if you don't mind me saying so."

He gave a smile that didn't quite match his eyes. "You are growing fond of correcting me, Miss Potter. Or is it simply your true character shining through? Are you one of those students who lives to show up their professors?"

"Are you speaking of myself, Professor O'Bleeke, or of Tom?"

"Is it Tom, now?"

"Professor O'Bleeke, perhaps we should talk about this in order to get on with the work without distraction."

"Yes, perhaps we should, Miss Potter. I do not appreciate insubordination from my staff. As hard as it is to believe, I have more experience than you have-"

"And far more knowledge, I am sure," said Hermione. "I find it very unfortunate that your prejudice against bloodlines prevents you from utilizing your considerable knowledge at times."

"Miss Potter-"

"If it was anyone but Tom who was responsible for that proof-anyone pureblooded, that is-you would have immediately seen the proof to be correct, I am sure. It is vital that you understand that I am not insulting your intelligence, merely your prejudices."

Professor O'Bleeke let out a labored sigh. "You have been raised by idealists, Miss Potter, and you are yet too young to see the tendencies of the world. I have been a professor at this school for over half a century, and it is an unfortunate maxim that

pureblooded wizards and witches tend to do better at their subjects than muggle-born ones-"

"Rubbish," Hermione muttered heatedly, dearly wishing she could proclaim her own heritage at this juncture.

"If you would think on it without emotion, you would see that there is a reason for this. The developmental window during which any young child learns the most occurs before his or her enrollment into any school. If that child is brought up in the Muggle world, he or she learns quite a bit about muggle things, which are not valueless, I am sure. Still, it leaves them with a certain impediment compared to a wizarding child who has been exposed to magic during this window-"

"Leaving aside the fact that your argument is ironically based on muggle psychology, how does that explain Tom Riddle? He's at the top of every subject, even yours--"

"And he would be a great wizard had he been raised in this world. As it is, his impediments leave him bitter, and arrogant, and driven to learn in order to prove himself rather than in order to become a great wizard."

"Still, it does disproves your implied theory that a muggleborn is inevitably a poorer wizard-"

"Though there may be an exception or two, those exceptions never adjust to wizarding society in the way they would had they been born into it."

"Of course they don't, if the society won't let them adjust!" she cried. "Are you even aware of the Muggle war, and what they are fighting about, and how very much you sound like the muggle dictator that Grindenwald has allied himself to?"

O'Bleeke waved his hand in the air as though he was swatting at a somewhat annoying fly. "The Muggles have always had their quibbles over Gods, it is one of the things that separates them from us."

"They are shoving Jews into ovens! They are burning them and torturing them and killing them en mass, whether they are practicing or not, whether they are grown or not, Professor! There will be six million dead by the time it is put to a stop."

"Is that so?" said the Professor. He furrowed his brow at this news, seemingly losing interest in arguing with her. The diagram of the Time Machine hovered behind him. "That is terrible, I had no idea, but I don't see how it applies-"

Hermione glared at the diagram, a bit of an idea forming about the Time Machine's structure. "It's the logical conclusion to your ignorant theorizing, Professor. Perhaps you'll realize it by the time our own war comes," she said calmly, moving towards the

diagram.It was worth a try, she thought, thinking of those theorems Dumbledore had handed to her. "But there's no mathematical proof of the ignorance of your claims. Suffice to say, there's a very good argument against them in this room that I can't even bother with, and I don't expect to hear another thing about it while we work on this." She drew a polar plane in the air with her wand, beside Professor O'Bleeke's diagram. "I am certainly not your staff. I am your partner, and without my help you wouldn't even know

where to begin on this project, so please do try-" After she drew the polar plane, which provided a backbone to the diagram, she drew a line in the air that corresponded to the first line in the first of the theorems she'd brought with her from the future."-to keep your prejudices to yourself. It's not really pertinent to this field anyways, except if you force them into it, which is what you did with Tom." She drew a second line, a third. One, the number that all numbers came from; two, for duality, and correspondence, and opposition; three, for synthesis. The first theorem consisted of just three lines, and served as the axiomatic basis of the others. Its lines in the air corresponded to the overarching structure of the time machine. It looked similar to Professor O'Bleeke's diagram, but the differences between the two were clear.

Professor O'Bleeke was enough of an arithmancer to find this breakthrough more interesting than their previous line of debate. He, too, was staring openly at her diagram. "The rest of the theorems will fill it out, of course," he breathed.

"Have you ever seen magic embedded into the very architecture of a thing like this?" asked Hermione.

"No. I don't suppose I have."

"With the time turners, there's magic embedded into the material that composes them, but the architecture really doesn't matter. the turning motion sets the spell into motion, of course, but the hourglass and the encasing globe are just symbolic. There've been several versions of the time turner. There can be no other version of this Time Machine."

"Fascinating," said Professor O'Bleeke.

"Yes, quite," Hermione agreed, content enough to leave their argument behind. The Time Machine would prove to be argument enough against a war whose logic progressed along the same lines as their argument.

After Hermione's breakthrough, Professor O'Bleeke, although still a bit cool, found no need to ignore her any more. They worked together on implementing the architecture, and consulted Professor Dumbledore on the appropriate material for the Time Machine. Whether or not it was still necessary to embed spells in the substance composing the machine was as yet unclear, and O'Bleeke and Dumbledore entered a period of constant meetings and commiseration. Hermione was left to take the reins of the Arithmancy class into her hands for a week. Luckily, the plans for that week concerned triangulated calculations, which she had always been exceptionally good at.

Alicia Silversmith approached her after one of her classes as she was gathering up her materials. "Miss Potter-"

Hermione turned to her. "Yes?"

"I was wondering if I could speak to you."

"Of course," said Hermione, rolling up the third of seven rolls of parchment she had concerning the day's lesson.

"Well, I've been interested in an arithmantic apprenticeship - like you, and I was wondering if you would supervise the thesis I intend on submitting?"

Hermione turned to her. Alicia was a tall girl who was strikingly pale from a distance. What she hadn't noticed until now was that her eyes were a pale mixture of pink and blue. She was, literally, an albino. "Hmm. Have you any general ideas for your thesis?"

"I was interested in doing a historical investigation into the attempted proofs of Jasper's last theorem."

"Ambitious," Hermione murmured. She regarded the girl. There was no doubt that she was sincere, but it was equally obvious that Alicia was using this opportunity to do what Adrian had asked her to in the library; namely, to check up on her. Well, there was that saying about keeping your friends close. "The most interesting and controversial area of arithmantic theory."

Alicia smiled, breathing out as she did so. "So you will?"

"I'll be honest with you, Miss Silversmith. I'm quite busy lately, and it's the first time I've taught, or apprenticed for that matter, so I haven't much time to spare. But what time I do have is at your disposal. I'm rather enamored of that theorem as well."

Alicia clasped her pale hands together. "When can we meet?"

Hermione slung her bag over her shoulder and began to walk towards the door. It seemed a bit silly to be tutoring someone who stood nearly a foot taller than oneself. "If you can be prepared by Sunday, we can meet," she finally replied.

"Yes, of course," Alicia said from behind her.

Hermione nodded, and Alicia waved and departed for lunch. Most everyone was already gathered in the Great Hall. Hermione turned away from its direction and instead ascended the nearest stairway. Conversation and laughter echoed from a long way away.

Hermione went up the stairs slowly, leaning against the banister. She felt. homesick. That was the only way to put it. Homesick for this very castle, but as it would be in the future. With the people who would populate it in the future. She turned at the top of the staircase and headed down the empty corridors for Ravenclaw. The windows revealed a sky dark with clouds and waning light. The days were getting shorter. It only added to the urgency of the situation. Hermione looked down at her shoes, eyes stinging. Stress tears. She'd gotten them throughout third year. School and that awful fight with Ron and Harry. She'd thought she'd be without friends again. Luckily, she'd had her time turner, and had managed to hide her tears, except of course when she was with Hagrid. Somehow, it felt good to have a good cry with Hagrid. Maybe it was because he cried so easily. Pity Hagrid wasn't here. He'd have been consolation, however small.

_Thumph._

She didn't know who had thrown it, only that she'd blocked a spell from behind her. She turned quickly, furiously, and found Pendrake Malfoy standing behind her, wand drawn. He looked happier than he should for someone whose spell had just been blocked.

"What do you think you're doing?" she murmured in a warning tone. "There is a reason I'm on the staff of this school. You can't throw a spell my way and get away with it." She raised her wand, ready to cast a binding spell if he ran.

Pendrake smiled. "I was so hoping you would say that." He held up his hands, palm up. "I have been hoping to run into you at an appropriate moment to demonstrate just that. I am incapable of dueling you and coming out on top. I cannot best Tom, and perhaps a dozen others in this school. I am only adequate in the area of defensive and offensive dark magic." But he was smiling, and on the last sentence he took a step forward and his tone changed. "However, there is something I am better at, than anyone." He was closer, and Hermione realized he had purposefully guided them into using low voices.

"Oh, yes," Hermione said loudly. "Do tell us." Some of the occupants of the paintings near them turned around and looked at them.

"Clever, clever." Pendrake leaned towards her ear. "Do go about this quietly, my dear. You see, I have some information, and there is nothing you can do about it with your skills and brains. It is as simple as this: a little pet of mine will take this information to - you can choose - the school administration or Tom."

Hermione tried not to cringe away from his breath in her ear. "What information?" This, she said quietly. After all, she didn't want anyone to know this was about information. There was far too much sensitive information about these days for her to be careless. Even though she wasn't looking at him, she could positively feel Pendrake gloating.

"There is no, and has never been, such a student as Mione Potter at Beauxbatons."


	9. Chapter 9

Hermione's face drained of color. Pendrake Malfoy smirked. It seemed to be some kind of insidious inbred genetic trait, the smirking, she thought viciously. Regaining her balance, she raised her eyebrows at him and folded her arms.

"Kylee and Stuart Potter are a childless couple who live, quite full time, in Wales."

She stepped away from him, her folded arms between them, but he leaned into her ear again.

"And that leaves us with an obvious question. Who are you?"

Hermione broke away from Pendrake. "Professor Dumbledore struck my name from the records in accordance with Act XIV of the Troisieme Conventione. It was a protection of my identity as a relocated resistance fighter. Just because he altered my records doesn't mean my story isn't true. Everyone will see at once that you're just search of attention." All those years Harry and Ron had been saying her voracious appetite for reading everything was pointless. She'd have to remember to rub their noses in the point when she saved them from certain death.

"So what you're saying, Miss... Potter, do you insist? What you're saying is that it doesn't matter if I give Dippet the information. But I think it still matters if I give it to Tom. I know what he's capable of, and I think you do, too."

"Why do you say that, Mr. Malfoy?" she asked, disgusted with the way her height seemed to compromise any effect she had on people.

"Haven't you noticed?" he asked, although what she was supposed to notice Hermione didn't know. "And, anyway, I know your story isn't true, and he's utterly capable of at least proving that. They'll probably give him another award, special sevices to School, Country, and Community."

"Then why don't you prove it," Hermione suggested, determined to bluff him.

"I will," he returned, looking down at her. "But why don't I say it louder so all the pictures will know that you're a fake. Tom talks to some of them, you know. They're his eyes and ears, and he has more besides those. And if you try to hex me or obliviate me-- I have ways of knowing--I have a little pet trained to go straight to Tom Riddle."

There was a passage of time during which Hermione averted her eyes from Pendrake's and tried to think of an angle out of the trap. There seemed to be none available. She was compromised. Her mission was compromised. "It's obvious you want something. Get on with it."

Pendrake smiled toothlessly, eyelids lowered, peering down. "That, I'd like to discuss with you somewhere else. I understand you're a great lover of the Forbidden Forest?"

Hermione set her chin and turned to walk towards the school entrance without further notice. "With any luck you'll be eaten by an Acromantula," she muttered under her breath. Pendrake walked behind her, which was well enough until she started to be nervous about it. Despite the fact that she was well-armed against any attack he might try, something about his presence behind her was unsettling. But then, no one liked being followed, did they? And perhaps it was the situation she found herself in that made her so unnerved. Her plan was threatening to teeter over into oblivion, and with it, the future of everyone she loved. She quelled a brief surge of panic. Panic would not help her now. She steadied her breath as they exited the castle, walking through the grounds which were strangely, eerily empty. She saw only one student out by the Quidditch Pitch, robe whipping past him in the sharp, cool wind.

Hermione guided them down a path that led to a clearing near the perimeter of the forest. She waited for Pendrake to enter the clearing, standing by a tree near the entrance in case she felt any need to extricate herself from the situation, which she very probably would.

"My motives are probably not what you think, Miss Potter," said Pendrake, with great emphasis on her surname. "I loathe Tom Riddle above all other creatures."

"Funny way you have of showing it," Hermione noted coolly.

"I have no choice in the matter," said Pendrake. "In fact, that is why I have sought your help."

"Blackmailed me," she corrected.

"I am about to reveal to you sensitive information," Pendrake explained. "It wouldn't do to reveal that to you without having, say, a trump card."

"Reveal away," said Hermione.

Pendrake expelled a pent-up bit of breath, clearly unhappy at her reaction and uncomfortable progressing in the conversation. That suited her, though. "Tom... forced me to befriend him. It was a political move, in order to assemble the little group he has about him now."

This roused Hermione's interest not a little bit. How silly of her not to realize that the answer to her curiosity about Tom's fifth year had fallen into her lap. With a hefty price, to be sure. But still. If she were to parlay this turn of events to her favor, she ought to take advantage where she could. "Oh?"

"Yes. There is a... curse. I've never heard of it before, although I've since found that it's being used in the war on the Continent. It's why I thought you might be able to help me."

"Which curse are you referring to?"

"When he uses it, he says Imperius."

Hermione's blood curdled at hearing this. It shouldn't surprise her that Tom knew the curse, but it did worry her. It worried her also to see a symptom of the darkness that lay under his imperturbable surface. And lastly, there was a very real danger that Pendrake was under it now--she checked his eyes, quickly. No. Thank goodness she knew the signs, as all too many in this time did not. "Can you be more explicit? You aren't under it now. When, and how exactly, does he use it?"

"The first time... we had a confrontation. I thought he'd simply broken and would duel me, but instead... he made me do things. He made it clear he would make me do things whether I wanted to or no. That he would use it as punishment. He gave me the choice of acting on my own."

"To do what, exactly?"

"To make my friends his, to gather the most reputable Slytherins around him so his pitiable lineage wouldn't be a problem anymore."

"Yes, the half-blood business. And why did he choose you, of all people, to initiate the proceedings?"

Malfoy's lips thinned a bit, and he seemed to be considering.

"I've already half an inkling the half-blood business had to do with you, Malfoy, so let's not waste time with half truths. I'd like the whole story, from the beginning.

"I... well, he was just going about, chin up all the time, as though he belonged in Slytherin. As though he wasn't the first half-blood there in centuries. I knew about it for a while, from my father, and after a while I couldn't stand it. So I... I found proof, in document form, and put it up everywhere in Slytherin, so no one could miss it."

"Thus demonstrating the inalienable class passed along your line," Hermione commented dryly.

"And where, Miss... Potter, does this crusading spirit come from? Surely not from family indoctrination. What of your family?"

Hermione couldn't help but feel heat rise to her cheeks at the mention of her family. "That, Mr. Malfoy, not even you can ferret out." She sighed, suddenly feeling a great wave of hopelessness wash over her. A pet, he had a pet who would go to Tom and ruin her entire plan. Even if the information got to Dippet the damage control might well be insurmountable. "And pureblood or no," she said, leaning against the trunk of a tree, "which I'll not give you the pleasure of knowing... You came to me for help. Get on with it."

"I heard you're capable of a sort of permanent shielding spell--I saw evidence of it, so don't bother to deny it."

Her lips quirked a bit at his imperiousness. His grandson had been slightly older the last she'd seen him, and his own veneer had seemed just as flimsy. Small comfort in the face of this obstacle. "Wonder who you heard that from," she said, her tone implying that she didn't.

"Teach it to me, so when the half-blood--I saw that look, you must be a mudblood--"

"Blood won't help you. It's the normal shielding charm, done silently, and repeated as fast as my pulse."

"What are you saying?"

"Would you like me to write it on a bit of parchment for you? I think I'm clear enough."

"You just--keep on casting it?"

She raised her eyebrows in response. "Patience, tenacity, and not a little talent. If you're determined enough you may have my success, only I've had quite a bit of practice, and Tom will see what you're doing as soon as you try it."

He grasped her wrist tightly and she gasped. "You know I can't," he said, white-faced.

"I bet the half-blood can," she whispered viciously. He rose his hand as if to slap her and she ducked, but the hand never reached her. When she looked up from under the fall of her wild hair she saw it, raised and still and beside his smirking face.

"You're still cowed, mudblood. I still have the power here, and I am very tired of upstart mongrels pretending to be worth more than they are. You will find a way for me to disengage myself from the sway the half-blood has over me, and you will find it soon." He yanked her arm so she was forced closer to him, and she refused to meet his eyes. "And every indignity I suffer in the meantime you will answer for."

She was hardly paying attention any more, her heart was beating so loud. She forced herself to think, but her panic sent her vague forays into reason off track. He let go of her, and she was back against the bark of the tree, thrown back rather hard. Don't look at him, she told herself. It will only make it worse, and panic will do nothing to solve the problem.

"Who knows," he drawled. "I may even set a deadline."

She could hear the crunch of his feet against the undergrowth of the forest as he walked away. Perhaps it was that which did it, the physical diminishing of a dangerous object. "And if I am a pureblood?" she whispered. "What will you make of your Muggle manhandling then?"

He turned, his face composed. "If you are a pureblood, then you have a very bad reception to my attitudes, and I will not regret having taught you your manners." And he finished going.

Hermione sank to the gnarled roots of the tree, and all the half-thoughts she'd been keeping at bay rushed to her like flies to a honey-sweet corpse. For one, the fact that she was forced into an impossible position. She didn't know how to free Pendrake Malfoy from Tom's coercion, and even if she did, it would lead to some kind of showdown which would probably come back around to her. Either way, her mission was compromised. She couldn't keep things in a holding pattern for long, and even if she found some way to resolve the issue to her favor, Pendrake would surely use his blackmail against her again. Quite possibly to help him seek some revenge on Tom. And Hermione was certainly not up to confronting the future Lord Voldemort just yet, so out of accordance with her plan.

Ron had once noted, after having nearly brought her to tears with three victorious turns at Wizards chess, that her greatest weakness was a nearly addictive dependence on plans. He had also pointed out to her that her greatest strength was planning, and that where one plan fell short, she could always come up with another one. She looked up to the sky, to the stars and the spaces in between them, and wished he were here to help her with her next move.

Funny that, in the middle of a weekend day that didn't fall on a Hogsmeade Weekend, Tom found it so easy find the hallway in which the one-eyed witch's statue resided empty. He smiled as he tapped her with his wand and murmured "Dissendium." Things had been growing easier. He could swear he detected luck, and power, and control in some abstract sense, if only faintly at times. It would slip out of his hands, as it had with the appearance of Mione Potter, only to guide and sway him so that he knew his path towards his objective would be met. He couldn't help but notice that things came to him more easily if he was immoral. But then, morality had never been dear to his heart. Today's objective, of course, was Professor Dumbledore's meeting with a certain Mr. Knauss, who Tom knew, and presumed Dumbledore didn't know, to be a double agent with knowledge both of Grindenwald and the incident in Alsace. He, for one, did not intend on being late.

Tom hurried down the secret passageway. He had just been through it the night before, and the way seemed shorter due to the familiarity. He had planted an escaulpo charm on each of the tables in the Three Broomsticks, since he wasn't sure where Professor Dumbledore and Monsieur Knauss would choose to sit. Since he didn't want to waste time rifling through the tedious conversations of the patrons, he'd decided to watch through a window to see where Dumbledore and Knauss chose to sit. At the end of his passageway he exchanged his school robes with a cloak whose cowl fell over the upper portion of his face and shadowed the rest of it. Although he would have anticipated that the disguise might attract more attention than his uniform, the Hogsmeade residents also seemed keen not to be caught looking in his direction.

Just a few minutes left. Tom ambled over a thin, fresh dusting of morning snow to linger a few metres from a window. If Dumbledore and Knauss were coming from the East he'd be able to see them going towards the entrance. Looking up at the sky, a wild happiness possessed him momentarily, and a smile broke over his features before he mastered himself. He was on the cusp, could feel the power and tension of the moment at his fingertips.

He caught sight of Dumbledore's familiar spangled robes at that moment and couldn't help but feel it was a moment of synchonicity. The smile curled the edge of his lip briefly as he noted their movement. The stood for a while, talked with the fat old matron who ran the establishment. Then Dumbledore gestured to a table and Knauss took a seat. The third table from the northeast pole. It was the fifth charm he'd placed the day before. Tom gilded away from the pub towards the Shrieking Shack for privacy. It wouldn't do for any passersby to spy a smoky copy of the conversation about to take place.

Tom sat on the gnarled root of a tree at the edge of the forest bordering the path to the Shack. His heart gave a brief thump as he extended a cupped hand and moved his wand over it to reveal the conversation via the charm. Nothing happened. He felt a similar blockage as to what happened whenever Hermione entered Dumbledore's office. He muttered the incantation again. Again, nothing. Tom was momentarily overwhelmed by the surprise, but he had no immediate ideas about what to do about it. So he sat, staring at the emptiness he held in his hand, under an empty sky, waiting for an answer to come. He had been sure he was stepping towards something. But then, it had happened before. It had happened briefly, and the charm had resumed its application. It would happen again. It had to.

Tom passed his wand over his hand again. Softly, an image flickered to life.

It was them. "And now to the matter at hand, Monsieur Knauss," said Dumbledore. They had been speaking of something vital, Tom realized. That was the reason for the silence. And he realized it was the reason for the other silences. What he could not fathom was the reason he had been allowed to listen, for he knew suddenly and surely that Dumbledore had been permitting him to listen for some time, not only to him but to the other members of the staff who he had been spying on.

"Zee girl, Minerva, has detected something strange in one of zee bodies," Knauss began. "However, eet ees not a matter of Transfiguration. She suspects eet may be a potion, but none that she has any knowledge of. Eet has altered zee body. However, zere is yet no way of telling eef eet had something to do with zee battle zat took place."

"I see," said Dumbledore with not a little weight to his words.

"I am sorry I cannot relate more," replied Knauss.

"It isn't that, Monsieur. I am afraid it is quite likely the potion did have something to do with the battle that took place, and if it did, I am quite sure that none of the reasons that explain how the two are linked will be pleasant."

"You theenk zere is a chance zere was a survivor?"

"The possibility is growing ever more likely, Monsieur Knauss. You understand that this discussion is to be kept utterly secret. If she did survive, no one must know. I know there those who are duplicitous in France, and we much not chance this information getting in the hands of Grindenwald's forces."

"I understand, Monsieur Dumbledore."

"I hear that your cousin is in the midst of designing a new chocolate? Do tell me of this most illustrious endeavor."

Tom expelled a breath at this. The utter fool wanted to talk sweets after making a spy privy to sensitive information? He couldn't believe Dumbledore hadn't discovered Knauss's dual nature. However, he might not have exactly the right picture. If Dumbledore was allowing Tom to be privy to information, there were certainly levels of subterfuge he was unaware of. But the conversation was winding to a close, and soon he would have the rare opportunity to interrogate a source close to the incident in Alsace. Tom extinguished the flickering image cupped in his hand and set off for the Three Broomsticks. It was seeming likelier and likelier that Mione was the very survivor Dumbledore and Knauss were speaking of.

Tom returned to the nook he had used to observe Dumbledore and Knauss' seating arrangements. He could see Dumbledore standing and speaking to the fat proprietor. Not a few moments later, Knauss emerged from the edifice. Tom watched him turn east and waited before following him. He made his movements seem his own rather than guided by Knauss's direction. He ducked into The Hog's Head, noting the man's direction, and departed through the back, making not so much as a ripple in the bar. Knauss was now at the perimeter of Hosmeade. He was heading for an apparition point. Tom moved slowly, hiding himself in the trees. There, that was far enough from prying eyes. He sent a silent stunning spell at the man. Knauss fell in a clean arc, landing on his stomach. Perfect. He would never see Tom. Quickly, smoothly, Tom made his way to Knauss. When he was close enough he could see the small signs that displayed struggle with the stunning spell. It was the type of thing that revealed itself in the face and neck. There was more rigidity there than was strictly necessary. He'd better be quick about this.

"Legilimens," he whispered, passing his wand over the man.

He was first met by the proliferation of images and sounds at the forefront of the man's memory. Dumbledore, the pub, apparating from France. Vaguely, Tom thought of peeking in closer on Knauss's conversation with Dumbledore, but Legilimency required a narrowness of thought processes, and Mione filled the parameters of his mind. Her face was before him, clearly--the large, youthful eyes, shaded with darker contents than they had been made for, the soft mouth so often set in a stern line, the small nose and gentle slope of cheekbones. He rifled through the man's thoughts--he was certainly a spy for Grindenwald, he worked mainly with an elegant-looking black woman. But he was looking for Mione's face. Alsace, the bodies in Alsace. This brought him to a meeting with a stern-looking young woman whose hair was pulled back into a severe looking bun, introducing herself as Minerva McGonnagall. Yes, this was it. She was the Transfigurations expert who had come to have a look at the body. The body, the body. They were walking through a long, dimly lit hall. And then there was a room, one wall covered with jars, various body parts floating in a preserving fluid. At last they came to the body.

It was curled upon the table, a closed fist near its mouth, as if to protect itself. It was a child. A chubby little blonde girl. There was a moment of shock, and he could feel Knauss fighting back, and felt his own thoughts being pulled at, Mione's face--he pulled back, checking the scene again, to be sure. It wasn't her. And yes, this was the only one who might have survived the skirmish in Alsace. And it was not, was not her. Tom broke away completely in shock, now. He stared for a moment at Knauss. He was farther away from understanding the situation than he ever had been.

Quickly possessing himself, Tom retreated back to the cover of trees. Once hidden, he retracted the stunning spell. As expected, Knauss jumped up quickly, turning wildly in an attempt to hex his attacker. No matter.

"Obliviate," Tom said softly. And then Knauss was confusedly looking about, walking this way and that. Obliviate took care of everything. Tom waited until he saw Knauss recover and go on to the apparition point. Knauss stopped, and pointed his wand towards himself, and disappeared with a faint pop. And Mione's face returned to the forefront of Tom's mind. He didn't even remember that he had not looked for that portion of the conversation between Dumbledore and Knauss that he had not been allowed to hear.

Henri Knauss knew that something had happened in Hogsmeade, and a strong suspicion that it had to do with Dumbledore. It was stupid to stay, however, especially since he was so confused and couldn't see whoever was responsible for his state. He merely apparated back to his quarters in Le Quartier Latin, where Bellonia Zabini was awaiting him. She was in a white gown that highlighted her dark features and looked, as ever, like a fallen angel. She blinked her long, slanting eyes at him, and intoned, "Et oui?"

"Dumbledore is ever the fool, and I believe I've been obliviated."

With a maddening slow grace she picked up the goblet of wine on his mahogany footstool and took a pull from it. "It is a good thing they have chosen me, then, to be your partner. Who knows more of the minds of men than the Black Widow?" She smiled, softly. "Have I ever told you of my beautiful Pensieve, a gift from my third husband, the darling Mr. Silversmith? It has the peculiar quality of translating one's subjective memories into a more objective picture. It is able to clear the mind fogged by drink, trick the reluctant mind into giving a whole picture, even to extract memories that have been obliviated. And it is made of white gold and encrusted with 24-carat pink diamonds. Did you know that the yellow tint to gold that gives it its name is actually an impurity?"

Knauss sat across from her on his recliner. "Yes, your obsession with purity. Well, do fetch it so we can find what it was that was so eager to hide."


	10. Chapter 10

- Lord Voldemort.

- Tom.

- I have spied on Knauss and Dumbledore's meeting.

- Yes?

- Afterwards I tracked Knauss and extracted what information I could find about the Potter girl.

- Dumbledore is letting me eavesdrop, I'm sure of it. The charm didn't work at first, and then suddenly came to life. It happens in his office, usually when Mione is in it. It is feasible that he draws up another ward when she goes to him, but this time, it was just Dumbledore and Knauss.

- It took you this long to come to the conclusion that he is letting you overhear him?

- ...Yes.

- You know the damage may well be irreparable.

- Perhaps. He is letting me listen for a reason. Now, I must find this reason.

- Did you not search for this reason in Knauss's head when you had the chance?

- ...No.

- You are a foolish little boy. I wonder that you were able to create me in the first place.

- Do not presume--

- I will presume and continue to do so. This has gone far enough. You are blinded by this girl. She obfuscates your perspective and you fare poorly in your actions because of it. You attach far too much importance to her--

- She is important. I know that now more than ever And who are you to speak of perspective, who live in a book?

- And yet I know you better than yourself.

I doubt that.

- Oh?

- You are only privy to that which I tell you.

- You are half in love with the Potter girl.

-...

- Now do you understand why it is necessary to dispose of her?

-...

- If you want information, then take it from her before you dispose of her. You are a Legilimens, and none but Dumbledore could resist you. If she does resist you, torture her. No one at all can resist that, in the end. Besides, it might clear your head for you.

- She wasn't in Alsace. Now do you see why she's important?

- You utter fool.

- I'm done with you, for now, Voldemort. I may seek your guidance once more, but it will be your last chance with me. Your powers of persuasion are very poor. You may like to ruminate on that in the while.

- Certainly, Tom.

"At long last," said Judas, in the tone one would use when speaking to a servant. Tom was distantly annoyed by it, but the feeling quickly passed. After all, the only determinant of status here was magical skill, and he far exceeded the others. After all, he was architect of their surroundings; it was a short way towards the architecture of their little society.

Judas, Jean, Adrian, and Malfoy were seated in earthen chairs he had transfigured for them upon their entrance to the cave. "And what will you teach us today, Professor Riddle?" drawled Malfoy. Tom merely raised an eyebrow at him. He was getting somewhat out of hand lately, something that he would pay for later. For this session, however, he was focused on Judas Rosier.

"Nothing that isn't illegal," he promised. "Where is your familiar, Judas?"

Judas warily withdrew it from his pocket. It was an oversized Egyptian scarab beetle, a beautiful thing really, with a blue sheen and unusually large yellow eyes. Tom extended his hand, and Judas placed the beetle in it.

"This, you all know of, but few, I am sure, have practiced it. So now, we will learn to control the effect of the curse." He drew his wand up to the beetle. "Crucio!"

The beetle went absolutely mad in his hand, its legs flailing so much it flipped onto its back, its wings buzzing against his palm. Judas had risen from his chair, face red, lips set in a firm line. "How dare-"

Tom drew his wand again and smiled. "Oh, do sit, Mr. Rosier. You're interrupting the lesson. You might try drawing your own wand the next time you presume to do so." Malfoy looked unaffected, but Adrian was attempting to exchange a look with Jean, who was only looking on with mild amusement and satisfaction. "That is the curse in its most undiluted form, which is about the effect most people try for when they use it. However, it is quite possible to qualify any curse one uses, so that it is milder or perhaps even stronger. This does have its benefits, as overuse of the undiluted form of Crucio tends to inspire its victim to the very heights of madness. This, of course, is quite unfortunate if one is trying to procure information--" Tom broke off, remembering his diary's suggestion regarding Mione. Just as quickly, he mastered himself. "When one is trying to procure information out of a victim, which is the most common use of this curse, it is best to start with a mild form of the curse. I've heard that it is surprising how many cave early. In any case, a victim is much more persuaded when they realize that the curse affects them more and more each time. It is easier to resist if you already know what's coming. A particularly clever way to do it is to vary the strength of the curse at random, so that the victim doesn't know if it is a strong curse coming or a weak one. One can lull the victim into a false sense of security with a string of weak curses, and them hit them with a nearly unbearably strong one. This way of doing things has a much lower occurrence of madness, of course. However, if one is striving for simple torture, it is quite possible to deliver to curse at an even higher level than its undiluted form. This is what we will be practicing today, of course." Tom proffered his hand to Judas. "Judas, thank you for the use of your pet." He raised his wall to the ceiling and summoned some of his transfigured owls. "We will practice on these. They are not live owls, as you will be able to see if you look closely at them. As technically inanimate objects, they feel no pain. However, I have embedded spells in them so that they register the level of strength of the spell directed at them. Judas and Jean; Adrian and Pendrake, practice together."

The group obediently split into pairs, and Tom smiled. Clearly the group thought they were here to be tutored in the dark arts. For Tom, it was as much a chance to form them into a group of servants as anything. It was a subtle game, inspiring obedience in others, requiring constant improvisation and versatility. It was a game, however, that he enjoyed.

And it made him feel better after the discussion he'd had with the diary. Only the diary could sway his confidence that he was pursuing a course of success. And each of its points had a root of truth. He certainly should have used the opportunity he had with Knauss to discover the bit of conversation that had been blocked from him. And Mione... Tom tried not to think about that particular accusation. He had purposely distanced himself from those sorts of relationships with women, although he knew full well that he could possess a fair number of them. But what he saw others doing seemed too superficial and silly, a sign of weakness. And anything other than that, anything real, he knew quite well would mar his chances at success and progress. So he had eschewed the matter altogether. The diary's accusation, however, had unveiled the long-hidden nature of his growing fascination with the Potter girl.

Hermione stepped into the clearing near the unicorn colony, a quarter mile west of the path to Grawp's cave. The moonlight was cold and bright. Somehow, talking to the centaurs made everything crystallize. All the first pieces were in place. Dumbledore was working on creating the fold they needed to get another Tom, and she had come upon an idea of how to enchant the structure she was working on with Professor O'Bleeke while speaking with the centaurs. It wasn't necessary to make the Time machine able to travel to all points in time. Really, all she needed was for it to make the connection between two discrete points in time. A third point in time, if she discovered where Harry had been kept in captivity. However, she needed Tom for that, and she had no idea how to bring him to the centaurs without endangering her mission.

So far she'd also been unable to come up with any hypothesis as to what energy might fuel the time machine. She looked around. It would be nice if the answer lay in the forest somewhere. She made a quick survey of the plants around, more out of habit than anything, and in so doing she discovered a dark figure standing among the trees. He was half-hid to her by a patch of sonorona bushes. Her heart gave an involuntary leap. She readied her wand, cursing herself for not consulting the Defense Diagram. "Step forward and tell me what you want," she commanded as calmly as she could.

A beat passed before the figure responded. He moved forward, past the brush he was standing behind. Tom's face was very pale in the moonlight. A corner of his lip tilted up into a crooked smile.

"What are you doing here?" Hermione finally asked.

"Some would say that I would be in the right to put the same question to you."

"I'm not a student," she pointed out.

"I have meetings at night," he told her carelessly. "It's approved of by Dippet."

"Meetings for what?" she said, before thinking better of engaging with Tom.

"Enquiring young mind, aren't you?"

"Meetings in the Forbidden Forest at midnight? It's just that... surely this can't be a weekly sort of meeting."

"We're improving our magic," he said, evenly. "I'm leading their studies."

Hermione face drained of color as he said it, and suddenly she remembered who she was talking to. Was that how it started, then? Meetings to improve their magic indeed. She nodded automatically, though, and turned to look for that path that forked into the main northeast path.

"And you?"

"What?"

"What are you here for?"

"Plants," she replied.

"I find that hard to believe." She paid attention to him again. She wasn't sure if he was looking dangerous or if she was ascribing it to him.

"Oh?" she managed.

"I could have sworn," he said, slowly and precisely, "that I saw you talking to a centaur."

She held his gaze for a moment, wondering how long he'd been wandering around. "Do you make a habit out of stalking people?" She asked evenly.

Tom smirked slightly. "Only when they have fascinating little habits like wandering around in the Forbidden Forest at night and talking to the centaurs."

"Right, well... I'm approved as well." She turned to the path and started walking towards it. "I should be leaving. You can lurk after me or stay here, whatever pleases you.

"Is it approved of by Dippet?"

"In the flesh," she called over her shoulder. Tom was entirely too aggressive about acting on his suspicions. She starting to be unable to bear the pressure of it, particularly with Pendrake Malfoy causing her an undue amount of stress as well. Rock, meet hard place. And there Tom was, walking behind her, acting as though he hadn't just secreted himself behind a sonorona bush in order to spy on her. "Do you think I need some kind of an escort back?" she asked him as he strode by her.

"Well, you do look like a harmless little thing," he replied, looking down on her. He was a lot taller than her, and it did have something of an effect when he chose to use it.

She stared at the brazen statement. "Looks can be deceiving," she muttered.

"Oh, do tell."

Hermione sighed. "Well, for one, I've got about five poisons secreted up my sleeve, primarily in gas and liquid form."

"And how is it, Miss Potter," said Tom, a bit too casually, "That you come to be so familiar with the particular dangers of the Forbidden Forest?"

She glared at him. What was he trying to catch her at? "I grew up in the woods, you know. Le Foret Sacre, en Provence" she replied, converting fully to her French. "Does my justification appease you?" she added.

He offered her a small smile. "And what do you feel the need to justify?"

She expelled her breath in a frustrated sigh and walked more quickly. He easily caught up. She didn't look at him. She was sure he was looking at her, and she might bet he'd be smiling at whatever game this was. "What reason do you have for questioning me as though I'm one of the students?"

"And are you so different from a student? You're only as old as half the seventh years are, including me, and there are still rules they wouldn't like you breaking."

"Is that your paltry attempt at a threat?" she snapped.

"I'd just like to understand exactly when it was that Professor O'Bleeke felt the desperate need for an eighteen-year old apprentice."

"Since a special project came up-" Hermione broke off when she saw a dark figure cross the trail ahead. She knew that movement from long, horrified descriptions of Ron's. In a moment of incredible stupidity, Hermione let the word "Aragog" escape her lips in a whisper. She stopped, and Tom stopped beside her. They watched the spider cross, and just as Hermione was wondering just how many children Aragog had and just how many places they could be hiding in the forest, she realized Tom was looking at her.

"Hang on," he said. She turned to him, and saw a spider the size of Tom's head on a tree directly behind him. "How exactly do you know that name?" There were six other spiders somewhat near the spider on the tree. They were probably behind her too, all around her in fact. Judging by the sudden distraction in Tom's face, she was right.

The spider on the tree behind Tom leapt for him. Hermione's wand shot up instantly. "Protego!"

Tom's wand was up too. "Repulso!"

"Scutio!" A bluish film sprung up from her wand and surrounded them in a dome. A spider's arm was cut off by its sudden appearance, and wriggled for a moment on the ground. There were spiders all around them, all of them roughly head-sized.

"Well, there's that solved," remarked Tom.

"Not exactly," said Hermione, her wand still upright to hold the shield. A spider was pawing at it, and a strange little tickle went down her spine. "It's not mobile. The shield, I mean" There was a crunch to her left, and Hermione saw Aragog again, this time much closer, and she was much bigger than anyone's head, even Hagrid's. Well, maybe two of Grawp's, to be fair.

The luminescence from the sphere softened and brightened Tom's features. He was looking vaguely in her direction. "Couldn't we keep recasting it and run for it?"

"That seems to have a few too many variables in it, primarily the chance that we might cut each other in half if we aren't going at exactly the same speed."

He considered, and shrugged. "Well, it's plan zed for the moment."

"There's definitely another way. There's got to be. There always is. It just requires a plan." She screwed up her eyebrows. For the second time in her life, brooms came to mind during exactly the situation she didn't want to use them in. "Brooms," she groaned.

"Brilliant. I can just summon them. Can I cast a spell through this?"

"No."

"You'll just have to let it go and recast it, then, won't you?" At just that moment, Hermione noticed peripherally that Aragog's leg was very close. It slammed down on her shield. She dropped to her knees, and the ceiling of the shield dropped with her. Tom bent down before it hit him.

"Sorry," she muttered, and stood up again. Aragog's leg came down again. Hermione winced, but upheld the shield.

Tom was watching Aragog carefully. " Let it go when I say. I'll only need a moment."

The leg came down again. Hermione's knees buckled a bit.

"One, two... now!"

"Finite Incantatem!"

"Accio brooms!"

Aragog's leg descended, and she cried "Scutio!" again, and Tom pulled her away from the descending leg when it was inches from her, and it was cut off as the shield sprang up over them again. The leg, roughly Hermione's height, twitched dangerously. Tom pulled her closer as it came nearer. Aragog was screaming. Hermione watched, repulsed, as the leg slowed and then collapsed. The move had caused the smaller spiders to retreat, and Aragog was throwing a distracted fit. Then, two brooms from the Slytherin team appeared on the horizon and sped to them. They stopped abruptly outside the shield.

"Ready?" asked Tom.

Hermione nodded once, Finited the shield, and ran for a broom. She awkwardly straddled it, and saw that the spiders were no longer distracted. Tom was already five feet in the air. With a surge of panic, she shot up, but not before a spider had managed to tear a long line in her robes. Leaves clawed at her as she rose, to much higher position than Tom was in. He was looking up at her questioningly. Desperately, she heeled in her broom, only to have it start arcing out to the left. She saw Tom shrug and follow her. She veered to the right to make the broom straight, and ended up hurtling deeper into the forest. She broke through the top of the forest, and heard Tom breaking through behind her.

"What are you on about?" she heard him call.

"Back, turn back," she muttered desperately to the broom, and pivoted until she faced the school. Abruptly, her broom turned upside down. Her stomach dropped and her robes fell over her face, and she suddenly realized her grip was more for propping herself up than clinging on for dear life. She started dropping, managing only to circle three fingers around the broom. They slipped off almost immediately, and she shrieked.

She slammed against something that was much too close to be the ground, and a moment later she realized it was Tom. He had her rather awkwardly by the waist, and was holding her against his side. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and tentatively held on to his arm. He easily lifted her up so she was sitting more or less on his lap, sidesaddle on the broom. It felt uncomfortably precarious. She tried hard not to think about being so high up, but the increasing wind across her face told her that they were certainly flying, and flying fast. It was a bracing wind, cold and fresh. Tom's arm was still around her, and she held onto it. She could tell when they were level and when they started nosing into a descent. A sudden jerk told her they were on the ground. She stumbled as she felt the ground under her feet, and Tom held her up by her upper arms. She opened her eyes. Tom was smiling at her. A toothless smile, but a smile nevertheless, and not a darkly shaded one. Who would have known he was capable of it?

"Well, you are a spectacularly bad flier," he said. Hermione swayed for a moment, and then shook herself from his grasp.

"Yes, well..."

"But a spectacularly good spellcaster." Hermione looked up at him. He was looking at her rather intently.

"Scutio, that's one I haven't seen before, and I know quite a lot of spells."

"I-- well, I made it up. A long time ago."

"Quite a spell to make up. Gets you out of sticky situations." It might have been a cloud drifting over the moon, but Hermione thought she saw his eyes darken. "And you've emerged from quite a lot of those, haven't you?"

"What?"

"Oh, you know, the spiders just now, and even centaurs, and whatever it was that happened the night you first came here. What exactly was that, that you came from?"

Her throat felt dry and tight. "That's been explained, and doesn't bear any more explanations." She looked back to the castle. "And again, I should be going."

"Not before you tell me how you know who Aragog is," Tom said evenly.

Well, this qualified as a sticky situation, and one that Scutio wouldn't help her with. Fortunately, Tom was right. She was good at getting out of them. She'd have to make a bit of a sacrifice, though. She reached into a cloak pocket for the Defense Diagram. "Because that's what it says on my map."

She offered it to him.

Giving her an appraising look, he unfolded the map carefully and looked at it for quite a few moments. Then he looked up again. "You made this."

"It's why I go to the forest so often," she explained, realizing quickly that she should have simply denied it. "And the centaurs... help me."

"Centaurs don't associate with humans, especially not to give them a hand in cartography."

Hermione sighed, feeling the wash of weakness that came after a rush of adrenaline. "Dumbledore associates with them. Beyond that I've no need to tell you anything."

Tom folded the map into itself again and gave it to her. Was he standing closer? He pressed the map into her hands, and bent so that he was closer to her height, and her heart gave a sudden, hard thump that she was sure he could hear. "That's all right. It's not like I would believe you anyway." His eyes were intent on hers, and she found she couldn't look away. She noticed, vaguely, that his long white hand was extending in the periphery of her vision, coming nearer to her. "You are the most fascinating creature--" the hand cupped her face-- "that I have ever known."

And then his lips were on hers, searing with heat in distinction from the coolness of his palm. All of her strength drained away, her mind muttering incoherently, and she gasped into his mouth despite herself. His other hand was on her waist, drawing her closer, and for a wild moment she thought of giving into the kiss. With great effort, she pushed herself away from him. His hands no longer claimed her, and her hand went involuntarily to her mouth. She felt faint.

"What are you playing at?" she managed, but there was no answer, nothing definable in his face, so she turned away and quickly walked the rest of the way back to Hogwarts.


	11. Chapter 11

1943

Uru was saying something, but Bane wasn't listening. "Time passes only so fast for those of us who are not gifted. This is the first chance that we have had to see how closely the data matches up--"

"That is not entirely true," said Griot. "We have seen a bit of Muggle history come to pass. We cannot regard this as anything but a fluke, especially if the philosophy is right--"

"Human information is worthless to us and you know it," Bane spat.

"Gnignahc si erutuf eht," said Uru.

Uru's son, Firenze, was at the edge of the group of foals being tutored on methods of celestial observation. It was clear, at least to Griot, that the lad was making a rather pitiful attempt at eavesdropping. Griot smiled a bit to himself. "Come, Firenze, what is your opinion?" Firenze ducked his head, having the good grace to look ashamed of himself

"That is how little weight you assign to it?" whispered Bane furiously.

Firenze cantered over. "Is it about the books?" The overcurious little thing had stumbled upon the books in the Corner of Perspective, where those of the tribe who had been blessed with unique perceptions lived. He'd been asking incessant questions about them ever since. Though there were those in the upper echelons of the tribe who wanted to harshly restrict access to the books, Griot thought of them simply as scientific data. And as scientific data avoided misinterpretation by being looked at by as many eyes as possible, Griot had given Firenze a book on Muggle geography.

"It is, little Firenze. What say you if a certain event we have been waiting to see happened a few seconds after we expected it to?"

Firenze chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully, and then, suddenly, looked up with bright, clear eyes. "It changed because you looked at it. Observation changes things."

Bane sighed in a rather exaggerated manner at this. Griot, however, was rather pleased at the boy's insight. He wasn't sure if it had come from the boy's reading--the scientist Jille had said something to that effect--or from the boy's own head. He was one of the brightest centaurs of his age that Griot remembered. He wasn't descended from Uru for nothing.

"I think," said Griot, "That I must suspend opinion on the matter, and allow our association with the human to continue for the sake of scientific progress."

1992

Ginny slept for practically a week after the incident in the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione spent so much time in the hospital room waiting for her to wake up that Ron finally told her to calm down and wait for word from him. And when the word came at last, Hermione was so nervous she had to ask Ron to walk her down.

"Absolutely mental, I tell you," Ron was saying as they made the long walk down. "I can't believe you feel nervous. Ginny's been crying ever since she woke up. If anyone's nervous, it's her. You'll just make her worse."

They came to the door. "Ron, could you wait outside?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "First you want me to walk you to the hospital wing, then you want me to wait outside the door. What am I?"

"My best friend," Hermione replied, for once not rising to the bait. "I just want to be alone when I talk to her."

"Oh, all right, then."

Hermione pushed the door open. Madam Pomfrey was bustling around the room as usual. There was a Slytherin Quidditch player with a really nasty-looking broken nose. Unsurprisingly, they had the highest incidence of injuries during practice sessions. She immediately spotted Ginny's bright hair across the room. Ginny spotted her at about the same time. And promptly burst into tears. All nervousness forgotten, Hermione flew over to her side and hugged her.

"How can you--I'm the one who--I petrified you!" she sobbed, and Hermione just tightened her hold on her, making shushing sounds.

"It wasn't you, Ginny."

"It was--I was so stupid--I told him I should return him, I mean it--"

"Who, Ginny?"

"Tom. The boy in the diary."

"Ginny," she said carefully. "You know who it really was, don't you?"

There was a whimper at this. "He told me, at the end," she whispered. "He was so horrible. I tried not to sleep, I tried to tell someone, but in the end--I couldn't fight him."

Hermione drew back to give Ginny a stern look. "Of course you couldn't, Ginny. You're eleven. He's the most powerful dark lord of our age."

Ginny smiled a little at this. "But Harry fought him when he was a baby."

Hermione grinned fully, now. She didn't want to embarrass Ginny, but she thought it would be all right to address the girl's crush, however indirectly. "How does it feel being rescued by your knight in shining armor?"

"Oh, Merlin, I'm so embarrassed. What must he think of me?"

"I know he's very glad that you came out of it. And he did go down as soon as he heard it was you, didn't he?" She didn't mean to give her false hope, but she wasn't entirely sure it was false.

"Oh, Hermione, I'm so sorry. I'm the reason you were petrified and I'm talking about Harry. I told Tom all about him. I'm so stupid."

"Don't say that, Ginny. You thought you were writing in a diary. He hardly needed to persuade you."

"But he... did. He did persuade me. He made me think my roommates were talking about me, and he made me think Harry hated me after I got the diary back. He made me hate Fred and George, and Percy especially because he was the only one who noticed anything was wrong." Hermione said nothing. It was clear Ginny needed to get it out, and she figured she was the best person for hearing it. "He was just so--- at first, he was so nice. He made me... want to tell him everything. It took me a long time to even notice after--you know, after Hagrid's chickens. Oh, he was horrible. But I thought he was good. How will I ever be able to tell again?"

1943

Hermione nearly turned right back around when she turned a corner and saw Tom Riddle striding down the hall. But that wouldn't do at all. That would be showing cowardice. So she squared her shoulders, fully intending to walk by without even a nod. That was how she was going to have to behave, wasn't it? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him notice her, and her heart suddenly started skipping paces and draining her. Walk, just walk, she told herself sternly. She saw him veer toward her. Damn him. And yes, there he was, slowing before her, blocking the perfectly straight line she'd been intending on walking on.

"Avoiding me, Miss Potter?" he drawled. It was different than his normal quiet tone. She wasn't sure she liked it, but at least she could detect some human tone in it. Even if it sounded condescending and self-satisfied.

She intended to give him a withering glance and walk on. She had grown quite good at withering glances in her years with Draco Malfoy. But when she looked up, she stopped at his mouth. This was to be expected, she told herself later. He had kissed her, after all. And surely as a part of this manipulative game he was playing with her. But it was a nice mouth, although she currently refused to admit it.

"Something wrong?"

"Yes," she whispered, and then said, more strongly, "Yes." It occurred to her that it would be much more fitting for a future Dark Lord to be ugly--oily and mean like Snape, for instance. "I seem to be standing in your general vicinity and speaking with you. I find that quite wrong." There. She showed him and she showed herself, at the very same time. It gave her heart, and she couldn't help smiling as she said, "Excuse me," and walked past him. And couldn't help noticing that he was smiling too.

1995

"Mum, you don't understand, Harry's going through a really bad time."

"What's bad, exactly, Hermione? Did a relative of his die or something?"

"No, but Mr Weaseley's been hurt--"

"I don't see what that has to do with Harry, dear. And it sounds like Mr. Weaseley will be fine. I don't mean to sound cold, Hermione, but your father has spent a lot of money on this trip, and it was specifically to spend time with you. We get so little of it."

"Mum, please--Harry doesn't even have any parents. Mr. Weaseley is like a father to him, and Ron and Ginny--"

"What did you say happened to him, exactly?"

"I--I can't say."

"There's so much you can't say these days. You must know we worry more after what happened in your second year."

"Mum, I would, really I would tell you. I want to tell you. It's just that, well, it's a matter of government secrecy. Mr. Weaseley works for the Ministry of Magic."

"Didn't you say his position was equivalent to human resources, or something?"

"Mum, I know how it sounds, but if I even explain to you why I can't explain it to you, I'll be saying to much."

Her mother sighed, and sat down. Her gray was coming out at the roots. Hermione always dyed her hair for her; it was their special thing. Hermione only just now realized, seeing it, that her mother probably hadn't made a hair appointment in at least a month so that Hermione could do it.

"Mum--mummy, you know I love you, don't you?" She circled her arms around her mother's shoulders and her mother offered her a weak smile.

"I just think sometimes that you love them more than me."

1943

As much as it pained him to seek the help of someone who might very well be a mudblood, Pendrake couldn't help but be grateful that Mione had come to the school. He might have been stuck under Tom's thrall forever, and that would have made him quite unable to make a move like the one he was making.

"You wanted to talk, Pendrake?" said Judas, depositing a pile of his books on the library table.

"That I do," he replied to the bulkier boy. He had never cared to associate with Judas before due to his sheer brutishness; Pendrake preferred more subtlety and class. Still, Judas was the only other one of their gang not completely under Tom's influence. "Let's speak bluntly," he drawled, placing his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together. "You don't like Tom Riddle and only associate with him for political reasons."

"If you think I'm dumb enough to fall for one of Tom's little games--"

"I despise Tom Riddle above any other human being," Pendrake interrupted. "And I think its high time to prepare for the time when we shall surely be able to overtake him."

Judas chewed on the inside of his cheek for a time, the gears in his head visible in their turning. "All right," he said. "Tell me the plan."

1998

"You all right?" asked Ron.

"Yes," said Hermione, and snuggled closer to him.

"Was it--all right?"

Hermione grinned at this and glanced at him. "I must say, you have a lot to learn, Ron Weaseley."

"Mione, don't joke with me about this. The male ego is fragile. And you're no good at joking."

"What do you mean I'm no good at joking?"

Ron gave her a serious look. "You think you are?"

"Ron!" she exclaimed, punching him lightly in the arm.

"Well, pardon a guy for caring!" he exclaimed. It's just you were so quiet."

"Yeah," Hermione sighed.

"Well, what is it?"

"I just wanted it to be perfect."

A sudden change in posture alerted her to the fact that that had come out entirely wrong, as always.

"I mean, it was, Ron." A look. "Really. I just meant..." she sighed. "I wish Harry were here."

"Hermione, that's disgusting."

"Ron, you know I don't mean it like that!"

"I'm starting to think I don't," Ron replied in an overly serious tone.

"You are so frustrating sometimes," Hermione sighed. She leaned back against him and looked up at the stars. How nice it must be to have your movements resolute and unchanging, the future utterly determined and lawful.

"I know," Ron said after a time. "I miss him too."

1943

"Pity we didn't see the attacker himself. He was careful enough on that account," Bellonia said, lavishing a loving gaze on the pale, glimmering Pensieve. "You might want to brush up on your Legilimency and Occlumency. You were only able to pull so little from him."

Knauss rubbed his forehead. Sometimes he hated working with Bellonia Zabini. "Yes, I'm sure you would have fared much better, as you always do when comparing yourself to others."

"Thank you kindly for noticing," she replied, smiling to herself. "So we only have the usual intelligence from Dumbledore to report?"

Knauss nodded. He really needed a good sleep after all the pulling and pushing his mind had been through today. Still, though, he thought, smiling to himself. He did gain something from the pensieve session. Too bad Bellonia, for all her bragging, didn't know when to utilize Occlumency. He certainly wouldn't let her get any credit for this.

"Really, who was that girl? She looked like such an insignificant thing."

"Mmm," Knauss replied in a tone of vague agreement. He knew exactly who the girl was. He'd only seen her a few weeks ago from Dumbledore's hearth. Now all he had to do was find some guileless student to extract the memory from. He, unlike Bellonia, understood the importance of seemingly insignificant details. As a result, he looked carefully at everything. He even took notes of his observations. It was what had allowed him to rise through the ranks in service to Grindelwald so quickly.

"Wine?" Bellonia suggested. "I'd prefer a Zinfandel."

"As you wish," Knauss replied, smiling.

1996

Harry was brooding again. Really, he was taking Sirius's death extraordinarily well, hadn't been debilitated at all. He'd thrown himself into Quidditch and special sessions with Dumbledore. But Hermione did find him brooding every once and again. It was obvious that he wanted to be alone; he was sitting under the shade of a sighing willow near the edge of the grounds, near the forest. Hermione never let him alone, though. She knew it annoyed him whenever she gave him understanding looks or asked how he was doing, but she couldn't help it. He was her best friend, and she had been friendless until he and Ron had come around. Harry never thought anyone understood why his friends were family to him, thought no one could relate to having grown up without any. But Hermione understood more than he knew. And he had been hated not for himself, but because of his parents. No one who knew him really disliked him. Except for Malfoy, but that hardly counted. But people had always disliked and been annoyed by Hermione. She'd never had a single friend before that troll. If she was truthful with herself, her mother had been right. She did care more about them than her parents. Sometimes. So she found that she could never let him alone. She went over to where he was sitting and sat down beside him, and didn't say anything.

Surprisingly, he didn't ask her politely to leave, or start talking about something clearly unrelated to whatever it was he was thinking about. He actually spoke.

"I feel... so wrong about thinking this, but I can't stop thinking--sometimes, anyway--that I'm just some tool of Dumbledore's. I mean, I know he cares and everything, and he's helping me all that he can, but... I might die. When it comes down to it, that's what he's preparing me to do. To go find Voldemort, and battle him, and maybe die."

"Oh, Harry," she said, and put a hand on his arm. She had no idea what to say. It was true, and it was awful.

"I mean, I know the whole Wizarding World, and the Muggle world, is more important that me, I just... I don't know, I feel like some sort of sacrifice. Sometimes," he added, as if to make sure he wouldn't be misinterpreted. "I just didn't think he would do that. I thought he wouldn't give a single person up. And obviously it's just not possible to do that. But still."

"Yes. But still," she agreed. What was right, and what was easy. And what was right and easy here? What had ever been easy for Harry?

1943

It is said that you do not always need to fight to establish who is the stronger man. Such was the case on a wintry night on one of the gentler slopes of the Alps. There were two figures on these slopes. One was a rather peculiar looking man with a crooked nose and a long, auburn beard. He wore spangled robes and looked out of place in the whitewashed landscape; too colorful and eccentric for the somber scene. This very discordance might have had an effect, for the other had chosen the setting and was perfectly suited to it. He was much, much larger than the other, having engorged himself with spells due to the effect his bulk tended to have on people. He wore a robe made from the flayed skin of werewolves, and beneath it, dragon-hide armor. His opponent looked ludicrous by comparison, but the message was clear enough: he did not take this meeting or his opponent, in fact he did not take much of anything, seriously.

"Ah, Mr. Grindelwald, how very nice to meet again. I do believe the last time was all those years ago when you disposed of my pupil."

"Dumbledore," grumbled the man, his voice as rough and large as he was. "What do you want?"

"Only to tell you that I cannot defeat you."

"I think I know this already."

"Have you ever noticed what a very dangerous statement that is, to admit your weakness to an enemy? It usually is followed by a bit of a disheartening disclaimer, so to speak."

"Get to the point, man."

"There is someone who can. You do not know who it is. He is not even ready yet. But it is undoubtable that he will be. It is undoubtable that he will see you as an obstacle in his rise to power. And I am so sure of this thing, and so sure that you will be unable to prevent it from happening, that I have asked you for a meeting just to flaunt my knowledge of it. Oh, and I have been passing along false information to Monsieur Knauss for five years to annoy you. I may not have victory, Mr. Grindelwald, but you are assured of a very unhappy fall."

And with that, Albus Dumbledore disapparated.


	12. Chapter 12

This is a very long, plot-heavy chappy, so consider yourselves warned. There will be much much T/Hr interaction in the next chapter, so wait with baited breaths for that. And that will be the point at which the fic on this site keeps up with the fic on schnoogle. From then on in new chaps are more likely to appear here first. Thanks so much to the reviewers, sorry I haven't been doing shout outs, but I'm doing this from an internet station, having no connection of my own, so time limits me from doing so. But really, reviews keep me going, so the less you want to go back to the long interludes of updates, the more you should review. And then I will try to thank you personally. Ta ta.

1.

It was better to bring the girl to Grindelwald than to bother going through complicated networks to see an action taken on what he realized looking into the Pensieve. Grindelwald, unlike many dictators, rewarded positive displays of individual action. And besides, he would avoid Bellonia Zabini's interference this way. She might be deluded by egotism, but she also had a knack for spotting important matters, which is how she had managed to rise so quickly in the ranks. So Knauss began almost immediately to put out his feelers and approach people to take part in a covert mission of his. Since he was a free agent organizer who could only hint at connections rather than proffer them, it would take a bit longer than usual to come to fruition. And those he involved wouldn't be of a terrifically high caliber. But Mione Potter was, after all, only a girl.

2.

"Yes, Tom?"

"The rule of triples states that recurrent arithmantic equations draw from three active sectors of magic, with the arithmantic sector playing a synthesizing role."

"Very good," Hermione responded, with a hint of a sigh in her voice and the consequent of her statement trailing behind in her thoughts: as always. Since she had taken over the majority of O'Bleeke's classes, Tom had become the most vocal of the students, and she couldn't help notice that his increased participation directly followed what she referred to in her thoughts as the incident. He was engaging her in some way, daily, now, but not at a high enough rate or in such a manner that would warrant a confrontation. He'd read her extremely well on that account. Nor was he being an annoyance. He hadn't spoken to her in a way that hinted at the slightest that he'd kissed her full on the lips a mere week ago. Instead, he'd draw her into conversation about some intellectual topic--having read her well there as well--in a manner befitting the relation of a student and a staff member. And each time they spoke, he made full, intense eye contact with her, which she didn't seem to be able to break until he so chose. It was... disturbing was the way she forced herself to qualify it.

Hermione wrote examples of each of the possible combinations utilizing the rule of triples and asked the students to write an essay predicting the results of each that night. She still hadn't broken herself of the habit of posing questions to the class. That always inevitably led to the raised hand of a certain dark-haired Slytherin.

She spent the last of her class delivering a bit of historical context to recurrent equations, and then pardoned the class for lunch. She set to gathering her papers and books and lastly, turned to the board and set a cleansing charm on it. She watched the cloth arc lazily over the board, willing the tension from running the class under less than ideal circumstances to seep out, somehow. Pendrake Malfoy and his silent threats sat at the same table as Tom, after all. A throat cleared behind her, startling her, and she turned quickly, only to find the dark-haired component of her troubles standing before her. Once her eyes met his dark, hooded ones they were, as usual, unable to stray away. She swallowed.

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to stay after?" she demanded in a weary voice.

A ghost of a smile, so transparent she couldn't be sure it was there, played about his lips. "Certainly, Miss Potter. You see, I was hoping to borrow the geodoscope for a project of mine."

She folded her arms. "And what project is that?"

"I was hoping to develop a bit of data for my thesis."

"Which is?"

"The role of geodisic lines in equations supplementing locator spells."

Locator spells. Funny how she could've used his insight months ago, to help her out of a situation he would be responsible for. Whatever god watched over time travel had a demented sense of humor. She didn't share it.

"No," she replied after a moment, with a tinge of wonderment to the pronouncement stemming from the fact that she was able to say it at all to the boy--for he was still that--in front of her.

If his face betrayed surprise, it was slight. "Is there any reason for you to deny me the use of the geodoscope?"

"Because," she answered evenly, "I share Professor Dumbledore's distrust of your every action. This is well-trod ground by now, Mr. Riddle, and I'm sure it's wearisome for us both to repeat the discussion." If only she were able to break away from that uncanny stare of his, she was sure her words would have more impact.

"I don't remember discussing it at all, Miss Potter."

"Broaching the subject is close enough to discussion for me when it comes to you."

"Making it a bit personal, aren't we?"

"Funny accusation of you to make, isn't it?"

That ghost of a smile returned to his lips again, but Tom was silent. He merely returned her attempted glare with an impassive look, and his eyes were very dark under the dark arches of his eyebrows, and she was standing close enough to see his eyelashes, which were girlishly long. They seemed an improper sort of thing for an evil person to have. And then the pale lips parted and he whispered, "Finally."

Unbidden, her hand raised a bit, as if she was attempting to steady herself. It stopped heart-level, as she came to herself. "Don't," she whispered back, and dropped the hand to her desk, and physically pushed herself from it and whatever it was that seemed to lock her to him. The look was finally broken. "I don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it, but don't." There was heat on her cheeks as she said it. She knew she was blushing. She knew she shouldn't be blushing. "Or to put it more precisely, I don't know to what exact end you're doing it, but I know there is an end." She slung her bag over her shoulder, not bothering to see if she'd left anything on the desk, and left the room as quickly as she could.

She didn't feel completely in control of herself. She'd never expected to be in such close contact with the person her mission concerned, after all, and she'd never expected him to try anything like this tactic on her. It wasn't as though she was about to go swooning all over him and reveal all her secrets, but the discomfort and tension from whatever game he was playing was certainly having an unhelpful effect on her.

If she'd decided to look back towards Tom as she left the room and made her way down the hall, she would have seen him smiling a real smile.

3.

More than ever, when Tom went to the Founders' section of the library, he wished himself able to pull Rowena Ravenclaw's books from the shelves. He didn't particularly need any more of old Salazar's volumes. Something about being so close to the founders felt simultaneously comforting and elevating, as though he was absorbing the heat of some great power. As he scanned the familiar shelves, he found himself wondering if Mione would be able to pull Ravenclaw's books from the shelves.

Of course, she would never do so at his prompting; that much was established by her demeanor towards him. For some reason, he found that he enjoyed their little confrontations, was satisfied by her need to push against him. Why would she feel the need to push if she felt nothing, if she wasn't concerned with him at all? That motive he'd glimpsed earlier, that Mione's purpose at Hogwarts somehow concerned him, had twined with his fascination of her, so that they were nearly the same thing. He wanted to find out everything she was hiding, and she was compelled to hide. It was a perfect battle for him.

The Formation of Identities caught his eye. He had seen the volume many times before, but it had never seemed to fit his studies or research needs. Well, perhaps it would do for a bit of light reading. What with Mione's refusal to grant him the geodoscope. And he had been so hoping to investigate the secret location of the fabled Sorcerer's Stone. Just as a lark, of course. He did crave immortality, but did not crave a dependence on a substance to provide it. It was a weakness, dependence. He refused to think of how his feelings towards Mione might verge towards exactly that.

He scanned through the table of contents. Chapter One: Identity of Self and Other. Chapter Two: Fiction or Fact. Chapter Three: Formation and Destruction of the Self. This last caught his eye and he flipped to it. Earlier in his career his perfectionism had driven him to read every single word of every book he lay his hands on, since you never did know what may or may not be of consequence. But there was only so much one could read, after all, so he had let himself be guided by instinct more and more, reading chapters that seemed to be of use here and there. The book's chapters seemed to be divided in halves, each being an enumeration of some opposite sides of a topic. The first half, on Formation, was concerned in the main with the formation of an individual's identity of himself. It was described as a manipulation of the self in order to make it strive farther than it would, left to its own recourse. Tom skimmed this.

The half concerning the destruction of a self was nothing short of riveting. The destruction of a self never concerned oneself; always another. It seemed Salazar had constructed a spell that was equal parts Avada Kedavada and Obliviate, in its application. Essentially, it was a way to get away with murder. You could kill someone and make everyone forget they had ever existed. So convenient, really. However, you had to know everyone you were dealing with, in such a spell's situation. If a powerful individual knew of the person's existence, you would have to be very careful to ensure that the spell worked on them.

Tom couldn't help but think of his father, and how nice it would be if no one knew of his existence, and the paperwork that proved it. He also couldn't help but think of Dumbledore, and how he was surely powerful enough and wary enough to detect such a going on.

4.

Alicia folded the letter from Mr. Knauss, uncle Knauss, as he insisted, and put it in the pocket of her blue robes. He was an influential old family friend, connected with the French Ministry. He had promised her a position there at her father's funeral. He'd seen a precocious child and made her a promise to secure her potential. He always said she would go far. And he hated Bellonia as much as she did. They knew she was indirectly responsible for her father's death. The name Black Widow had started floating around sometime after her father's death, not long after her second husband, and then she had married Zabini, the new money plebe. A slight to the name of Silversmith. And at the time that it came at, just on the cusp of the Silversmith line. Alicia was the last. Everyone had expected her father to produce more that her, but Bellonia had got to him first. The worst thing about it was, the witch had gotten the Pensieve, one of the more valuable family heirlooms, and Alicia's favorite. Alicia planned to get it back, someday, if it was the last thing she did. Alicia had a feeling Uncle Knauss knew about the Pensieve. Everyone seemed to know about Bellonia killing Alicia's father, but Bellonia Zabini got away with bloody murder in the corrupt French Ministry.

Now Uncle Knauss wanted to know about Mione Potter. How he had gotten wind of her, Merlin knew. Or Dumbledore. They did seem to be chummy. It's not like Alicia didn't know why he'd want to know about her. She'd been at the confrontation in Alsace. Perhaps they were going to send someone over to assassinate her. Alicia wondered if Mione was that dangerous. Well, she was going to meet her, she'd write Uncle back afterwards.

She found a table at the library five minutes before Mione was due, and used her notes to look over the particularly divine proof of Earn's that became a supplement to Almer's Theorem. Learning, to her, was like eating cuisine, lingering over certain foods and creating them over and over again to suit your taste. She read less than she could, but she read well, often memorizing lengths of passages. She would do well to specialize.

Mione seemed the opposite. She showed evidence of having done exceptionally well in everything. Word was she got every Newt except for Divination, and Divination was more often than not utter tripe. She wondered whether or not it was coincidence that Tom Riddle and Uncle Knauss seemed to think this girl was important. Although it could just mean that the girl actually was important.

Alicia was lost in contemplating the proof, as one contemplates a detailed piece of art, and Hermione had fully set a place before Alicia noticed her. "Oh," said Alicia. "Hello."

"Where are we?" Hermione asked. She looked harassed, hair escaping and curling everywhere. She had a black quill stuck in her hair and apparently forgotten. "I've just spent the whole day arguing with O'Bleake."

"Um, we were discussing functions."

"Oh, yes, right. Let's have a bit of a talk about the theoretical background to ease us into the more technical bits."

"Fine by me," Alicia replied. She'd noticed Mione seemed rabid on theory. Theory was nice, if vague. And Mione always linked it up to the technical bits anyway. They had a pleasant discussion about it, flipping through textbooks to clarify and expound. That was the thing about theory. You could discuss. When it came to technique, you had to go through the whole thing before you really felt it polite to respond.

Alicia watched the girl as she began to get into the technical bits. Her eyes were intent, focused on something that wasn't there. Her eyes had that intent, distant look to them almost always, she realized. Although none of her features was particularly beautiful or unique, they added up to a quite pretty, youthful face, which often wore expressions that were unsuited to it. The hair could distract from or enhance the face, depending on how you felt about the hair. It was wild, utterly unlike the thoroughly organized, intent girl who wore it.

"I can see why Tom likes you."

Hermione cut off in the middle of her explanation, eyes wide in surprise, her face startled into its innate youthfulness. "What?"

Alicia pressed on, thinking of Tom's request and Uncle Knauss's. She might glean something yet. "No one would dare say it, but it seems obvious enough to me."

"No-" her lips were quirking up in a smile. "That's not it at all. It's just that he's an overly curious boy who's decided he had things to find out about me."

"And why would he decide that, if there was nothing to recommend it?"

"How should I know?" Hermione sighed. "Anyway, you know more about it than I do, and you seem thick with those Slytherin boys. Whatever it is you're all playing at, I don't care to be involved."

Alicia looked at her steadily. "You can believe it or not. Tom is famous for being as inaccessible as he is. He's taken no girl, and he's certainly handsome enough to have a wide choice in it. It says something about you, that he's only ever shown an interest in you."

"Whatever it says, I'm not sure it's what I would regard as complimentary."

Alicia raised a pale eyebrow skeptically at this. "It is certainly better to speak of studies than of matters such as these. Do forgive the nearness to gossip. However, I feel it strategically good to acknowledge his... oh, curiosity about you... And you can't fool me that you aren't attracted to him."

Heat had actually started bursting onto Hermione's cheeks. She felt the way she felt when a bully had picked a fight with her in kindergarten, adrenaline rushing in a rather debilitating way, along with the sheer embarrassment of simply being confronted. It wasn't that she precisely admitted to any attraction, but it was wrong enough to make her feel incredibly guilty about, even if it turned out not to be true. Which she was entirely uncertain about.

"Well?" said Alicia. "You were saying about the constituents of Almer's function?"

"Erm, yes. The thing about them is, the function combines them in such a way as to make them greater than the sum of their parts. And that allowed him to have a set of intersecting functions, which did solve the equation for certain values." She was speaking much more quickly than normal. Alicia was giving her a slightly puzzled look. "Should I write down how it plays out?"

"I'm just wondering how the intersections work."

By the end of the session, they had gone through three types of functions and the proofs they appeared in fully. Mione stayed half an hour later than she had planned, and then took off at an absolutely rushed pace. Only then did Alicia unfold the letter from Uncle Knauss. She looked it over and started to pen a reply back to him.

"Uncle- I shouldn't wonder that you wish to know of Mione Potter," she began.

5.

Whenever Harry or Ron had needed Hermione, they had always looked for her in the library. It continued to be her favorite haunt, so she supposed it shouldn't be surprising that anyone who paid the least bit of attention to her whereabouts would know to wait for her coming to or going fro in her frequent excursions to the library. She had just put in a good night's work researching binding spells--they still hadn't figured out how to bind the Time Machine spatiotemporally to the Forbidden Forest--when a pair of cold hands dragged her roughly into a closet. The same one she'd hidden in with Harry when they'd gone back for Buckbeak and Sirius. Only now it wasn't Harry's face half-hidden in shadows, but Pendrake Malfoy's.

"Are you even trying to find a way to relinquish Tom Riddle's hold over me?" He seethed, suddenly altogether too close for her liking. She didn't answer. In truth, she hadn't really. "Have you forgotten the price you must pay for every indignity I suffer?"

"No," she replied carefully. "I haven't."

"Do you know what he did? And in front of everyone? In front of my peers?"

"How would I?"

He glared at her for a moment, calculations hidden in the shallows of his gray eyes. The left corner of his mouth quirked. "Shall I show you? Like for like, after all."

"No," she whispered, but he had her robes fisted in either hand already, and he brought them apart so her robes tore apart violently. Hermione stumbled and tried to escape the small enclosure, but Pendrake had her robes still caught in his hands, and they still had her shoulders and arms in them. The robes barely mattered--a mending spell would fix them, and she had a full skirt and school shirt on underneath, but somehow she still felt exposed. "Let go," she muttered. "Let go!"

"Look at the mudblood squeal," Pendrake whispered. He brought a hand up. This time she didn't duck. She managed to get her left arm out from her robes and had a wand in her hand. And all the time she was thinking he had done it, he'd done that to Pendrake, that he'd probably done worse.

"Stop," she told him, her voice firm. "This isn't getting you anywhere."

"I'm venting my frustrations," he replied. "It's getting me closer to calmness and serenity."

"You're not making me want to help you."

"You'll help me no matter what, Mudblood."

"I am not--" she started.

"You are. You are exactly like Tom Riddle in every upstart way. And you had better understand, you will help me whether you want to or no. You will help me even as I repay you with all that Tom does to me. You will help me if I repay you more. Because if you behave in any way I do not like, my pet will go to him. I assure you."

"I understand perfectly," she replied. She replied the way that she answered an intriguing question in class, putting it together aloud as she fit the pieces together. "You can slap me, and abuse me, and insult me, and even hex me, and I must still do as you say."

Pendrake smiled. "Good, little mudblood."

"This won't stop with Tom. You'll make me do more, things against him. You'll try to use my power."

"Yes." His face was as gleeful as his grandson's when he'd put that tooth-growing spell on her in fourth year.

"There's no way out," she whispered. "There's nothing else I can do."

"Becoming redundant now, aren't we?"

She looked him steadily in the eye, trying for all the life of her to think of another way. She mustn't, but she must. He wouldn't stop, she knew. He might ruin everything, she knew. He might cost her far far more than the price she was about to pay. He might cost her Ron, and Harry. The future. There was no other way, and there was no time.

Her wand was still drawn. "Imperius," she whispered.

She had only ever put Imperius on Ron, and only the once. It was not a dissimilar spell to Legilimens, in that you could discern a bit of a person's mind when you were casting it on them. Only you saw it at a distance, a part at a time, as though you were holding the mind in your hand like a ball, privy to what lay at the surface, what lay open to your perspective. As she saw a blankness descend over Pendrake's face, she saw him sitting with the rest of Tom's lackeys in--was that Grawp's cave? It was, she was sure of it, even though it had been transfigured almost past recognition. Tom was saying he would teach them a new curse that very few others knew of. He would use Malfoy to demonstrate. At first, it was like fourth year's fake Moody with the spider--a carterwhaul, a dance. And then, to the whoops and laughter of Adrian and Jean (Judas maintained a stony silence)--he had Malfoy disrobe down to his drawers. She couldn't help but think of the story Harry had told her about Snape and his father.

"I'm sorry," she said. It was only a half-truth. Her hand had been forced. She didn't want to do this, didn't want to do it at all. For she knew that she couldn't allow him the freedom that Tom had allowed him. It was worse than Tom had done him. Merlin, she was doing something worse than Tom Riddle, something worse than the boy who would become Voldemort. And Merlin forsake her, but she saw the opportunities that lay in what she was doing. She could spy on Tom through Pendrake. She could use Pendrake as he'd tried to use her.

But there were dangers, as well. Surely Tom would be able to understand what the blankness in Pendrake's eyes meant. Surely he wasn't done casting Imperius on him. Hermione bit her lip and leveled her wand at his eyes. A slight glamour about the eyes rid them of the blankness. She would have to be on guard with the danger Tom presented. She could finite the spell easily enough, even if it was from a distance, and she'd have to be sure to do it at exactly the moment Tom cast his own spell. But she had to see Pendrake in order to recast it. This meant she'd have to get to wherever they were before Tom was finished giving Malfoy his lessons, and hopefully in such a way that Tom didn't know she was there. Thank goodness for the Invisibility cloak on that account. Still, it didn't do much if all the doors were closed, wherever they were. Perhaps she could drill peepholes in all the likeliest places. Her mind ran ahead, assessing all possible risks and all the possible countermoves, never letting her retreat back to the realization that she'd just cast another Unforgivable, that she had compromised Pendrake's freedom and life utterly, that she had just done something worse than Tom.

Or that she was becoming more and more entwined in the affairs of the person she had come back in time at great risk to kill. To do another unforgivable thing.

6.

It looked as though she would also have to break herself of the habit of wandering the halls of Hogwarts so late into the night, Hermione thought. There was no doubt as to who the dimly lit figure at the other end of the hall was. It was the height, she told herself, that made her recognize him so quickly, and with so little hesitation despite the lack of light. Or the smooth, floating movement of his limbs. There was a moment where she thought she'd turn back, fly to the library and sleep there until such an hour as no one, not even the Head Boy, would be up. She knew how to undo all the wards, after all. But no, that was foolish. She'd just have to get out the Maurauder's Map and find a way to charm it to respond to this time--it had been blank since her advent into 1943, unlike the Defense Diagram. Then she could avoid Tom Riddle except for those times when it was unavoidable, such as when she taught class. Hermione squared her shoulders and made her way down the hall briskly, determined to avoid any sort of eye contact or exchange of pleasantries. Even if he offered one.

She committed the dark figure to her peripheral vision, determinedly staring straight ahead. She noted his advance. His face was indiscernible still, owing to its fixed place in the periphery of her vision. She looked more towards the wall, envisioning the Ravenclaw entrance. It was just around the corner, but seemed an unbearably long way away even so. Her skin was prickling. She gave a frustrated internal sigh. He wasn't the dark lord yet, for Merlin's sake. There was no reason for him to have this effect on her. She could feel him getting closer, feel the pull of eyes she was sure were looking her way. She almost couldn't bear it, and her heart seemed to be skipping beats that she needed. Pull yourself together, Hermione, she told herself. She'd been in a war, hadn't she? Surely she could manage to walk past Tom Riddle in a secluded hallway without having some ridiculous sort of nervous breakdown. Was he next to her now, or had he begun to pass? All she knew was that he was close, too close.

And she looked over just to make sure he'd gone by her by now. But he hadn't. He was looking straight ahead, but before she could do the same his eyes flicked towards her and caught. Her heart gave a great, unhelpful leap. She clutched her hand in a fist. Ludicrous, this was absolutely ludicrous, her mind insisted. The shadows seemed to fall across his face perfectly, making his face an unreal mask. Her fist unfolded and rose to her heart, clutching at a span of mended robes that lay across it. She turned away, quickly, and hurried down the rest of the hall, past that damned corner, and there was the Ravenclaw entrance, which had never seemed the sort of sanctuary it did now. She leaned against it, and slumped to the floor, adrenaline coursing through her veins and that unreal mask and those eyes stubbornly set in the forefront of her mind. It was a good while before she managed to say the password and get herself to her room.

7.

He always offered her lemondrops, Dumbledore did. Hermione wondered if he thought she'd developed some sort of taste for them. Really, she just took them out of a sort of combined nervousness and gentility. It could have just as easily been a sugarquill. But Dumbledore, being the overobservant man he was, always offered her a lemondrop. He'd called her to this meeting for the first time in weeks. She hadn't seen Dumbledore at all except for mealtimes. She was fairly sure, that for him to call her, he must have figured a way to fold Tom back in time. After that, they only had to finish the time machine. And then, she couldn't help thinking, she would bring Tom to Harry. For Harry to kill. But also for her to kill, in bringing him to his fate. At this point in her thoughts, sitting in the quite comfortable couch in his office, Dumbledore offered her another lemondrop.

"How do you do, Miss Potter?" At this, Dumbledore winked and tapped the air with his wand. It was an extra spell that he enacted whenever they spoke on privileged information. She wasn't entirely certain what logic it had. He would do better to keep those sort of charms up all the time. Perhaps he wanted people to think he didn't have defenses up. It might even be like him to do just such a thing. "Miss Potter?" Dumbledore repeated.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Are you troubled?"

"Constantly," she replied drily.

"Yes," Dumbledore stood a moment. "I must admit that I question what we are doing. I question it very much. It seems, though, that the end justifies the mean. It is only under such very extreme circumstances as these that we feel we must commit a horrible act to prevent a still more horrible act. In this case," he continued to himself, "a series of them."

"Professor Dumbledore..." she began, tentatively. "Do you think, perhaps, that we are changing time? Or, more in particular, me? It seems hard to see why my presence wouldn't... perhaps unmake the future."

"There is a spell," said Dumbledore. "As there always is. In this case, it is a very old one from Australia. You know they have the Dreamtime over there. They have had great fun playing with time, In Australia. This spell enables one to go back in time, and in such a way that the past doesn't change, but the future does. And it, the future, often exhibits the changes the person's impact really would have made in time. But when the subject returns, the past returns to its original telling."

"What if I--killed someone?"

"Miss Granger," said Dumbledore, in a mock grave voice, "You must really tell me if you are thinking of doing such a thing."

"No, it's just... do you see my point?

"You must strive to keep things in a sort of balance. There are things you should not do. Where I think of them, I have given you warning."

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore," she said at last, feeling not at all satisfied. "What was the name of that spell?"

"Om Dolg."

"Funny name," she replied, filing the words away in her head. "What does it do, exactly?"

"That is for me to know and for you to find out. Learning shouldn't be made easy, don't you agree?"

She did, in a way, but certainly not about this. She shifted a bit, stretched her legs. Dumbledore offered her another lemondrop. Fawkes made a little croak from his perch. "Have you found a way to do it, then?" Hermione whispered, looking down at her lap.

"I assume you are referring to the process of folding Tom back in time."

"Yes, I have."

Hermione nodded.

"Imagine if we were to make the Time Machine send Tom to both the future and the past at the same time? Then the self sent to the past would relive it, in such a way that he did need to go forward into the future."

"And--that self would go on to become Voldemort, wouldn't he?"

"Well, in a way, it doesn't matter, because of Om Dolg. However, it is quite possible that we are destined never to change the future by going into the past, and all such doings merely bring about what will happen no matter what."

"Yes," Hermione sighed. "We'll never quite know, will we? It's the sort of thing we couldn't know."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "I do like life's little mysteries," he said. "And surprises, I like even more."

"So" she said. Have you any idea of how to fix the Time Machine to do such a thing?"

"I do have a shrewd idea or two."

"Oh," she said.

"I assure you, Miss Granger, I will do my utmost to help you accomplish the mission my future self has sent you on."

This prompted a smile, but also she felt like crying. They were coming to the last steps before she had to kill a boy who had kissed her and gone on to kill her parents. In one possible future. In which it had happened to her. "I don't want to do this," she said.

Dumbledore watched her, carefully, for a moment or two. "You should understand something about Tom, Miss Granger. You may see the poison in him, but there are many kinds of poisons that are sweet."

"He never seems sweet," Hermione.

"Good then" Dumbledore replied, and offered her another lemondrop.

8.

"Oh, surely you want this, Mr. Borgin," came Hepzibah Smith's treacly voice. "I know you'll pay good money for my little trinket."

"I refuse to grant you anything other than the standard price unless you give up one of your more useful baubles."

The wide face creased into a smile, and the odd mixture of vileness and blankness in her eyes didn't change. Ms. Smith was possibly, Borgin thought, the most loathsome creature on earth. Everybody knew she had more treasures than even the Malfoys, but all she did was dangle some paltry little trinket in front of his nose, grabbing bigger prices than they deserved because of the promise of her treasure. Then she bought up all of his most interesting merchandise before he had a chance to show it around the clientele. And Lord knew Burkes was maniacal about the clientele.Well, Borgin was just about done playing things the slow and plodding Helga Hufflepuff way.

"Now now, Mr. Borgin," she said, waving a fat finger in front of his nose. "You know I like kind and gentle people to take care of my treasures. I need to audition you with the little pieces before I can show you the really interesting things."

"I'm beginning to doubt there's anything interesting about you at all."

Hepzibah's drooping and several jaws set to working a bit at this.

The doorbells announced the arrival of an interruption to an argument that Borgin had been sure he was going to enjoy. Dash the woman, if she wouldn't help his business. But it was Mr. Knauss, and the last time he had come in he had been with that Bellonia woman, and Borgin definitely wanted to be on her good side.

"Al!" Hepzibah fairly shrieked, running over to him.

Knauss brought her hand up to his lips perfunctorily and gave her a grin. "How do you do, my dear Hep?" He stood. "How very efficient it is, finding the both of you here."

"And why is that, Mr. Knauss?" Borgin asked in a rather overly dignified manner.

9.

In the days since she had Imperiused Malfoy, Hermione discovered that she could forcibly hold his mind and doings at length, putting him on a sort of autopilot, which she did when he was in class, having him explain problems away as an earache. But whenever she saw Tom Riddle out of the corner of Pendrake's eye, she readied herself. For what, she wasn't sure, but she wanted to be ready for anything that might go awry. Which it might, with him. So of course she couldn't help but look closer and guide Malfoy's actions more carefully. After all, she had to keep him from being suspicious of Malfoy. So of course, she drifted in as close as ever when Malfoy went with Jean LeStrange and Adrian Avery to the cave. She was so close she could smell the wetness of the winter air, feel a faint cool breath from it. She could feel the ease with which he climbed to the cave. She had done it a million times with Ron, to visit Grawp. No matter what, she was always breathless at the top. Boys had it so much easier than girls.

The inside of the cave was busy and breathtaking, evidencing the skillful work that far exceeded his age. Tom immediately went over to the shelves and tinkered with some of his toys. The three boys stood together in the center of the room, neither sitting nor speaking. It became obvious after a few moments that they were waiting for Judas Rosier. It was despicable how much power Tom wielded over these boys. It was fifteen minutes before he arrived, saying nothing, and sitting on a transfigured chair. Tom remained at the shelves, and waved his hand after a moment so the boys drifted to the chairs beside Rosier. He stayed by the shelves for a good long while, and a tension mounted in the air, everyone's annoyance with Rosier becoming visibly present.

After a while, Tom came to stand in front of them. He held a glove in front of him. It was a moment before Hermione, through Malfoy, saw that he was turning it into different shapes and cuts of glove, of varying shades of white. She noticed he waited until everyone caught it. Then he began to change the shades of the gloves, settling finally on a garish polka-dotted pattern that made a titter go through the group. He looked up at them.

"In order to win anything, anything at all, one must be able to do anything that is required. One must not be hindered by weakness, or ignorance, or moral compunction. Learning Dark Arts as well as the Defense against them opens up one's mind to twice the possibilities. Doing what others will not doubles the chance of overcoming them. One must overcome everyone before they have a chance to overcome you, and one must overcome all possible obstacles before one overcomes others."

He spoke well, and naturally commanded the boys' attention. He gave Judas a significant look before continuing.

He continued, "Judas, did you anticipate that arriving late would yield any obstacles to you?"

"Clearly," said Judas, "you're going to make an obstacle."

"Nonsense," Tom said with a wide, rather terrifying smile. "Actually, I will, but a very light obstacle. Now suppose we had all been talking about transfiguration earlier, and I had been telling everyone that I wanted them to memorize the set of changes I spelled into the gloves and replicate it with their own. Could you do that for me now?"

"No."

"Try." Tom proffered the glove, and after a moment of hesitation, Jude took the glove and changed it into a random white glove. "Wrong," said Tom, and the glove disengaged itself from Judas's hand and gave him a sharp slap in the face. Everyone laughed. Hermione coaxed Malfoy into a roughly similar laugh. And she realized that this was how he held sway over them. He constantly made them laugh at and belittle each other, so that no one was sure of their status.

Seeing the shadows of Tom's future self made her feel less guilty about her ulterior motive in spying on him. Having solved the problem that Pendrake posed, she was now in the position to solve another: how to find out where Harry was taken to when he was taken. The centaurs had told her that the contents to the event lay in Tom's head. Somehow, she thought she would find the answer by spying on him. He looked cold and powerful, standing in front of the other boys with his hands clasped behind his back and shadows sculpting his perfect face. Hermione shivered, and fought to keep the inclination from reaching Pendrake. Holding the Imperius over him was proving to be much more subtle and tiring than she'd anticipated. She had to sleep, and she could only hold a rudimentary Imperius over him then, and she dreamed now of nothing but war, and of evil.

10.

Ollie Fletcher was a smooth-haired, shark-smiled con man. You could often find him at the fashionable Flying Horn club, his little boy often with him, learning the trade. Whenever he told anyone the kid's name, Mundungus, he'd explain his sainted wife forced him to name the poor boy after her grandfather. It was, like most of his charms, manufactured for the sympathy it garnered and the innocence it conveyed. No one would have known that he dealt in triple W wands, which expelled users' spells at three times the normal force, to the user's great weariness. He also dealt in illicit potions materials, false snooker balls, and the like. He didn't know anyone who he wasn't getting something from or giving something to, with the exception of his little boy, who was the only thing Ollie ever loved, and that grudgingly. The real mother had been a Muggle waitress, who'd kept him away with threats of financial prosecution and the lack of prenuptuals. She'd got everything, in a word. Even though Ollie had been a shyster for a long time then, he felt very justified about it after her. After all, he was doing it for the kid. Who she'd named Mundungus, of all the names in the world.

They were at the craps table when Monsieur Knauss walked in. Ollie had talked to him maybe three or four times, but Knauss had really saved him at a Muggle poker game he'd played in Paris. Ollie knew he owed Knauss one, and he knew Knauss had come to collect.

11.

Judas sat down with Pendrake at the library. Hermione had decided it wasn't too out of form for him to do it at least once a day, and she could keep an eye of him that way. So when Judas sat down next to Pendrake, Hermione didn't have to use the Imperius at all. Except to talk back to Judas, which turned out to be distressing once Judas addressed some sort of plan he and Pendrake had. Which she knew nothing about. When she tried to glean the facts from Malfoy's mind, it turned stubbornly against her, a last vestige of Malfoy's attempt to fight the curse. And then Judas brought out a little black book. It looked very like the one Ginny had written in all through Second Year.

"Yes," she made Malfoy say. "Tom's little black book."

"I can't make it out," said Judas.

"Oh no?"

"But he used it as a diary."

"And you haven't found a way to read what it says?"

"No. You try."

Hermione made Pendrake take it. After all, he should. She concentrated on the area of his mind that was looking at the blank book with a shiny clack cover, terribly familiar from Ginny's descriptions. And she knew just how to make something happen. All she had to do was write something. And before she'd really decided on it, Pendrake was writing in the diary. It was a noncommittal "Hello."

"You," said the diary, the ink appearing in blobs and conforming into letters, and continued, "are not Tom."

"No. And who are you, if you are not Tom?"

"I am not privileged to disclose my secrets."

"By whom?"

"My owner."

"And is that Tom?"

Judas leaned forward and exclaimed, "Clever", and Hermione and Pendrake ignored him. The diary did not answer for a long time, and then it said something softly.

"No." It was in smaller letters than there had been before.

There was nothing else to say. "Then who?" Hermione prompted.

The diary wrote back, "Myself."

"And who are you?"

Another pause. The page sat clear and bland before Pendrake's eyes, and finally, Hermione saw it write, "Lord Voldemort."

Oh. Suddenly, things that didn't make sense before, made sense. The two and one, divided, yet to be united, the thing Uru had hinted at. It was Tom, but it was also the diary. He'd grafted himself to it in a more idealized form. Although it was an idealization that had horrible consequences, she realized.

Then it wrote: "And who are you, little girl?"

Judas laughed. "Blimey, it's an insult book or sommat."

Thank god for idiots, Hermione thought, after an initial moment of panic.

"Never you mind," she wrote.

Something surfaced quickly in the book and disappeared just as quickly. It looked like "Last Chance." And then, quite suddenly, something was pulling at her mind. She realized it was the diary, and already it was too late. The diary had both herself and Pendrake within its grasp. She backed away as quickly as she could, but it wasn't quickly enough.

"It's you," wrote the diary. "You have an Imperius--"

Hermione slammed the book shut, which clearly wasn't the right move. But there was nothing else to do. Technically, she was certainly in a better position than she would have been if that book had just proclaimed that it was Mione Potter, not Pendrake Malfoy, who was doing the Imperiusing. Judas was looking at Pendrake now, a smile stretching wider across his face.

"Well?" he said. "Who is it you've got an Imperius on, then, Pendrake?"

"You think I closed the book because I wanted you to know, Jude?"

Jude made a fist, knuckles crackling in the process. "I could just take the book and open it if I want."

Hermione forced a smirk onto Pendrake's face and made him draw his wand. "And I could turn you into a mongoose if I wanted." Judas backed off at that. Pendrake sat placidly as Hermione ran through all the possible solutions. Better that she satisfy Judas's curiousity before he ran around talking about Pendrake Malfoy and the Imperius curse. "I might as well tell you anyway, if it will make you happy. I do still want your help. But don't you go around running off your mouth, Rosier. All right?"

"Too right," Rosier agreed, looking piqued to get any information at all.

"I put an Imperius on Alicia Silversmith," Pendrake finally said.

"Got the frigid thing to open up, did you?" Judas chuckled.

"No, you pervert, I did it once, under Tom's instruction. Made her behave uncivilly to her roommates, after she refused a bit of information. Made sure it wouldn't be a problem in the future."

Judas chuckled again. "That's a nice one, i'nnit?"

"Yes," Mione made Pendrake say with a bit of relish, "a nice one for a half-blood, you twit..." She made Pendrake tap his lower lip with a quill. "Now, let me think of how we might use this wretched little book best to bring down his lordship." Another smirk. "Lords... who but the muggle-raised use terms like Lord?"

12.

As much as she would have liked to profess otherwise, Hermione had not read every book within the library she had brought with her back to Tom Riddle's school days. She still aimed to achieve exactly that, however, and was going methodically through the hundred-some unread volumes that made up her light reading list. She knew all of their titles and most of their contents. She wouldn't have thought she missed those volumes pertinent to her interests. However, she had never thought to look at the contents of "Pamphlets of Yesteryear", seeing as it looked to be nothing more than pseudo-political tabloid ranting. It was exactly that, she found, until the third pamphlet within its covers.

The pamphlet certainly had the tone of a paranoid piece about the conspiracy against the purebloods. In it, however, there was a mention of the 1954 deaths of four pureblood scions. Although their deaths were separated by months, the pamphlet contended, they were surely connected. After seeing their names, Hermione couldn't help but think so too, and wonder why no one else had come to the same conclusion.

The first was Pendrake Malfoy, leaving two sons, Lucius and Lyon. The second was Judas Rosier, a few weeks later. He left a girl, Henrietta, and a boy, Evan. The third was Adrian Avery, who married Alicia Silversmith and left her to raise four children alone. The last was Jean LeStrange. Although he had nephews and nieces, he produced no heir.

At last, it made sense. Hermione had wondered how Tom managed to gain such loyalty from the families of boys who seemed to dislike and mistrust him. No one after these four would even know him as Tom Riddle. They would know him solely as Lord Voldemort.

Julian LeStrange had found many of his best investors through Monsieur Knauss, so that, when Monsieur Knauss called on him for a bit of tea, he immediately agreed. He knew that Monsieur Knauss was in the French Ministry, and suspected that he was not entirely on the side of the light. This was, of course, to his preference. He did deal with fool wizards if he had to, but he preferred to restrict his contacts to families of good name.

They began their tea-time conversation with a bit of talk about Julian's son. Monsieur Knauss had heard the boy was promising. Apparently he was an acquaintance of Alicia Silversmith, who was more or less Knauss's ward after her father's death. Julian quickly understood that the conversation was in part an offer. And Jean would do well to work within the French Ministry.

But the conversation turned away from Jean after a certain point. It seemed that Monsieur Knauss was gathering people for some kind of operation. Julian knew that it was related to Grindelwald's rise on the Continent. After a bit of questioning, Julian had settled for himself definitively which side Monsieur Knauss was on.

13.

Bently Brown was a second-year Gryffindor, product of two solid Gryffindor lines in fact, although he did have a married in uncle who was a Slytherin. A rich Slytherin who was in Pendrake Malfoy's father's circle, which sometimes made them as good as in Pendrake's own circle. So he had blackmailed the little boy into performing an ongoing task for him.

On the day he had gotten Hermione to hex him, Pendrake had been holding in his pocket a stone which recorded her wand's signature to it. He had spelled his own signature to the rock, and if ever Hermione chanced to hit him with a spell, the rock registered the hit by lighting a vein of color up its side. It was something he had picked up at Borgin and Burke's. After all, he might not be a great wizard, but he could be very cunning. Who would think a little Gryffindor would be his pet?

But Pendrake was not a good enough wizard to withhold this information from Hermione when his mind was under her control. Although he did manage to withhold it for a good two weeks. So it was that Hermione woke up one night in Ravenclaw tower, the words "The Pet" escaping her lips like a dream. And immediately she realized what it meant.


	13. Chapter 13

Hermione had not been to one of the scheduled Hogsmeade weekends in her time at the Hogwarts of the 1940's. Soon, the year would turn. It was quite strange to watch people celebrate the passing of a year that had already passed, decades ago. And that was why she never went to the Hogsmeade weekends. Going to Hogsmeade at all gave her the sense that everything she was seeing had already happened. Everything, down to The Hog's head and the Shrieking Shack, were the same. Except that the Shrieking Shack didn't shriek. And she couldn't help but remember that this was where it came from, that last battle at Hogswart. But she had to go to the Hogsmeade Weekend. Because Bently Brown was going to Hogsmeade.

Hermione had spent the previous night going through this and last year's yearbooks to find the boy's picture. He had, apparently, missed this year's photos. She found him in the yearbook from the year before last. Small, brown haired, brown eyed, and a Gryffindor. Lavender Brown's grandfather. Lavender Brown, who had last been seen fighting back to back with Parvati Patil. Wistfully, Hermione had flipped through the pages until she was at W. There was a Weasley there, Bilius, who had given Ron his awful middle name. He looked a bit like a fat, young Arthur. He must have been Ron's great uncle. And then she had gone and cried herself to sleep. She hadn't realized the next day was a Hogsmeade weekend.

So she found herself embarking on a carriage with, of all people, Professor O'Bleeke, having no idea what she thought she was going to do with Bentley Brown. Professor O'Bleeke hadn't administered his own classes for months now. Hermione knew he was researching a charm for the time machine, to work in tandem with the Ob Dolg spell. He refused to work with her, and had actually found a trail that led to the solution. So her help was, for once, unnecessary. He seemed friendly enough on the ride to Hogsmeade. He was quite happy with himself, knowing the outline of the charm although he hadn't worked out the particular mechanisms of it. "Won't be long now," he said, hands clasped together. No, thought Hermione. It wouldn't. The completion of the Time machine was months away. And it would be completed. It had been completed when she went to it, after all. "Didn't need your help after all," O'Bleeke was saying now. Hermione rolled her eyes. O'Bleeke failed to notice. Soon enough, they were in Hogsmeade. Snow had started to fall. How often had she come into a snow-filled Hogsmeade with Harry and Ron?

She knew that Bentley had gotten into the third carriage, and looked for him once she left her own. She found him soon enough, chatting happily away with two of his second-year friends. He couldn't possibly know about it yet. Hermione remembered the rock from her dreams. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she had been unconsciously Imperiusing Malfoy, beyond the primitive Imperius she had during sleep. Which was highly interesting on an academic level, but made her feel guiltier than usual about that permanent Imperius.

She kept her distance behind the three boys, looking into shop windows and feigning interest in the ground, as they headed in a determined way for the candy shop. That was when she noticed Tom was in Hogsmeade. He'd gotten here without the carriages. Hermione quickly put some people between her and him, wondering worriedly if he knew any of the secret passageways. Then she realized he probably knew them all. Merlin, she had used the secret passageways on more than one occasion to make an excursion to the Forest. She gave an uncomfortable shiver at that, and watched the boys disappear into the shop. Tom didn't seem headed in that direction, and so she ducked into the shop She stopped just inside the door. Exactly the same. Her mouth watered at the pang of familiar scents.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be wrong to buy a few fizzing whizbees and chocolate frogs. She would definitely avoid any lemondrops, feeling permanently cured of the taste. She walked by Bently and his friends, who were lingering in front of a section reserved for Quidditch related candies. She had just enough for three of each, and after lingering by the register, decided it would be best if she left the premises. She stopped outside the door, where there was an intricate Christmas tree she pretended to admire. This would be the best place to see if she could Legilimens a few stray thoughts from Bentley without his noticing. After a few muttered incantations, she saw nothing more that proper frivolous Hogsmeade thoughts, although she immediately sensed his connection to Malfoy.

Hermione straightened and walked down the snow covered streets. She couldn't take the rock. That was as good as announcing she'd done something to Malfoy. She wondered how hexable the rock was. If only she could just take care of the veins. She saw the Three Broomsticks at the end of the street, and headed over to have a Butterbeer over a book, a fascinating history of Arithmantic nomenclature. She looked up from her toes and saw a man in front of her who she immediately recognized, though from where it took a moment to place. Then it came to her. The head in the fire. Monsieur Knauss. He was looking right at her.

Her heart gave a great thump and she stopped in her tracks. Monsieur Knauss did not stop. He was headed right for her. At this, her heart seemed to stop. Something was very wrong. She turned right back around the other way, with Monsieur Knauss trailing right after her. Her quick walk broke quickly into a run, as she turned a corner and darted inside the bookshop. She stopped, watched Monsieur Knauss walk by the window and then past the shop. She was going to have to get back to Hogwarts. The carriages were out of the question. They didn't run out of schedule and they were conspicuous as anything. The secret passageways immediately occurred as the best option. Tom had only just arrived in Hogsmeade. There should be no danger of running into him there.

There was the entrance in Zonko's, and the one in the Shrieking Shack. Going back towards the town center seemed like a bad idea with Knauss at large. There was a lot of open space on the way to the Shrieking Shack, though. Hermione took a deep breath and exited the bookstore. The Shrieking Shack was the best option. Hermione looked about for Monsieur Knauss, saw him nowhere, and darted across the street as quickly as she dared. She took one of the narrower streets towards the clearing where the Shrieking Shack was. After a few turns she made out the long, solitary path towards the shack. There was seemingly no one about. Hermione hesitated, then put on her invisibility cloak.

"Hold it right there, Potter."

She turned back, knowing before she saw him that it was Tom.

"Pretty suspicious behavior, putting on an invisibility cloak. One might think you're up to something contrary to the rules."

She let the hood fall and parted the cloak. "What do you want?"

Tom looked coldly down at her. "I wanted my diary back." He drew a little black book out from his cloak. "But I got my wish."

"You got into my dormitories," Hermione whispered, blood draining from her face. She had to get out of here, and she had to get away from Tom. Regroup. Everything was ruined. She'd have to do something now, and face him with wands, which she dearly wanted to avoid. And meanwhile some threatening French man was out there looking for her.

"Funny how it was there, isn't it? My diary?"

Hermione put the cloak back on, and drew the hood over to cover her face. "We'll have to continue this discussion like so," she said.

He didn't break his gaze from her, and strode over until he had the cloak in his hands. He ripped it away from her, exposing her.

"You idiot!" Hermione hissed. "Give it back!"

"No," said Tom.

"You don't understand," she continued.

"I think I do."

"There are people after me."

"You've been Imperiusing Malfoy."

"And you're a bloody one to talk!" Hermione spat.

Tom looked at her incredulously. Then he gave a short bark of a laugh. Hermione eyed him warily, and before he said another thing Hermione noticed five figures emerging from the forest. Two middle-aged men, a slick-haired man in a suit, a tall man in a striking blue coat, and Monsieur Knauss. It took Hermione a moment to notice a squat woman lurking in the shadows of the forest. Tom turned, slowly, away from her to face them, drawing his wand as he did so. They already had their wands drawn, and let off a hex the moment they saw it. Tom blocked it, but barely. Hermione drew her own wand.

"Get out of here," she told Tom. "This has nothing to do with you."

A hex hit her, but her shielding charm took care of it. What did Monsieur Knauss want with her? Knowing that he had some connection to that skirmish in Alsace, Hermione could imagine it was nothing good.

"If you think I'm leaving at this critical juncture," Tom was saying, "you're positively mad."

"We're surrounded by--six fully trained wizards and who knows how more. What could you possibly have to gain?"

Tom raised his eyebrows a bit and pointed his wand. "Practice, if nothing else." And then he muttered "Tenebro" and a golden light extended from his wand to one of the middle-aged men, twining around him so quickly that the man dropped his wand in surprise. With that, the rest of them let off four spells at once.

"Scutio," whispered Hermione, and again the bubble shielding charm descended over them. A certain silence accompanied them under the dome of the spell.

"You know, I think this may not be the best solution to being surrounded," said Tom. "What with our ensuing inability to move."

"It's a field tactic, for dense confrontations."

"Six wizards do not a dense confrontation make."

"Yes, well, don't worry. I've got a plan."

"You seem to have those a lot."

Hexes were sporadically bouncing off the dome of the spell. Hermione supposed she had cast it exceptionally well. The shield was opaque rather than its usual transparent shade, and she could barely feel the attacks on the shield. "When I say, head for the Shrieking Shack."

"The What-ing Shack?"

"Oh. Never mind." This day was not going well. "Just head for it before me. You haven't got the permanent shielding charm on you; I do. Ready?"

Tom grinned. "Always."

Hermione finited the shield the moment a volley of fresh hexes hit it. They had just a moment. Not even that, as Monsieur Knauss had been waiting for exactly such a moment as this. His lips didn't move, but somehow she sensed that he was ready. As quickly as she could, she let off a disarming spell that blew Knauss to his feet, though not before his spell hit her. Luckily, her shielding charm took care of it. Tom was already halfway to the shack. As he reached the door, he turned to her and let off a deflection spell behind her. That awful, squat-looking woman had sent of an ugly purplish bit of light. Hermione remembered the effects of that particular spell rather well from her time in the Department of Mysteries. Then Tom extended his hand and pulled her into the shack after him. A spell hit the door after them, singing it slightly at the bottom.

"Wards," Tom whispered, and Hermione nodded.

He was doing something to the perimeter of the shack. A basic ward. Unsatisfied, Hermione muttered an incantation and braided her spell with Tom's. A flick of his eyes her way was his only acknowledgement.

The spells completed, Hermione and Tom stood before the wall. "No telling what wards they know how to get past," he said. "This one was used to protect the walls of Byzantium." He coaxed the tip of his wand into a complicated whorl.

"Reprarum," Hermione guessed, and he nodded. "Xua Fa," she muttered, and directed her own wand across the four corners of the shack.

"That's the one they've got on the Great Wall of China, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said, feeling rather pleased with herself. She'd only read about it, and didn't know if she'd be able to cast it. After all, she only knew the theoretical underpinnings of the Chinese system of magic.

"Grantium."

"Not the strongest ward, but it's so obscure it will take them a year to figure out what ward it is," Hermione commented.

"I'm surprised you know of it, actually."

"Upantio's even more obscure," she replied, while casting that spell under the heels of Tom's spell.

"Right, because it was developed by that bizarre Muggleborn sect of Christians."

"Exactly."

"Didindlius," Tom incanted.

"That I haven't heard of."

"You're not the only one with a penchant for developing spells."

"Oh, you came up with your own ward?"

"Yes, for--" he paused. "Well, you never know."

Hermione knew immediately it was for Grawp's cave. She said nothing of it, looking around her. The Shrieking Shack's interior bore next to no resemblance to what Hermione remembered. There was no strewn, half-eaten furniture. It was clean and empty.

It occurred to Hermione that she was stuck in here with Tom.

It seemed to occur to Tom too. "This seems to work out rather well for me," he said, clasping his hands together.

"And rather poorly for me," said Hermione. "How annoying."

Tom folded his arms and turned to her, his eyebrows raised. "Annoying? Oh, so it's terribly annoying that I've discovered that you've got a permanent Imperius on Pendrake Malfoy, is it?"

"Yes," said Hermione, forcing her voice to remain steady. It was hard to stay calm with Tom when he looked at you so directly. "Just as it's annoying that in doing so I discovered your own Imperius."

"Is that how it happened? And why on earth would you, Dumbledore's little heroine and Hogwarts staff member, find it necessary to put an Imperius on a student?"

It was even harder to find an answer to his questions under those direct glares of his. She sighed. "I suppose you'll have to figure it out on your own."

"Perhaps I should ask Professor Dumbledore's help."

Her heart quailed for a moment before she realized it was an empty threat. "Go ahead. I'm sure he'll be interested in your own Imperius."

She saw his features narrow in anger. It was the first time she saw actual anger on his face. Somehow it was less frightening that she would have thought. Perhaps because it was still the anger of an eighteen-year old boy. Then he stepped forward, and this had the effect that the anger on his features didn't. He had his hand clamped around her wrist before she knew it. "Do you really want to encourage me to resort to other methods?"

She bit her lip, looking down at her wrist and Tom's long white hand around it. "We can wait here for help, or we can spend the rest of our time here debating."

"Let's debate," Tom replied, nearly snarling. "You've acted from the very beginning as though you're on some moral high ground and I'm a criminal. You're no longer on moral high ground."

"I'm on comparatively high ground," Hermione protested, doubting it even as she said it. She extricated her wrist from his grasp.

Tom laughed. "Oh, right. Because you were battling Grindelwald's forces in France? In Alsace, in particular? Do tell me more about that, because I know for a fact that you weren't there."

Hermione could think of nothing in reply to this. She took a step back from Tom, the space of the Shrieking Shack seeming suddenly too close.

"But you came to Hogwarts that night covered in someone's blood." Tom stepped towards her. "You have killed." Another step and he was altogether too close. "I can see it in your eyes."

"I can reply to that."

His eyes narrowed more. "I'll bet you can, being on close terms with Aragog and all."

Her heart began to quicken. This was going too far. It had been mutually assured destruction until now. They both had all their little missiles lined up. Now they were letting them off.

He could see that he had her, she knew it. He was practically sneering as he spoke. "And there is, of course, the rather obvious question standing right outside. What do all those people want with you?"

"I've no more idea than you," she said.

"Bollocks."

She folded her arms. She was going to have to think, very quickly. Tom knew entirely too much. And she knew better than to think she could try anything with him. He'd surely block all mental magic. Feigning calm, she pointed her wand at her feet and transfigured a stray screw into a comfortable sofa. She sat on it, crossing her legs. "So long as we're here, there's no reason for me to be uncomfortable."

"I think there's quite a lot of reasons for you to be uncomfortable."

"When have I started caring for your opinion?" she muttered. Think. Monsieur Knauss had been talking to Dumbledore, had been to Alsace. He must be interested in her because of Alsace. If so, it would be for a few reasons. Either because he thought she was someone who had been there, or because she hadn't been there.

When she looked up, she found Tom sitting in a rather imposing and far too fitting dark chair. She couldn't help rolling her eyes. Think. Only one person knew she hadn't been there. Dumbledore. And, as he had just admitted, Tom.

"How exactly do you know for a fact that I wasn't in Alsace?" said Hermione slowly. She looked up at him. "And what does it have to do with Monsieur Knauss?"

"You admit it," Tom breathed.

"I don't doubt you know it already. What I'm interested in, is what you did to Monsieur Knauss."

"Did to him?"

Hermione glared at him. "Yes. I'm quite sure you did something to him." It occurred to her that now, when so much information had been lost, it might be necessary to use a gambit. Ron had told her all about gambits. "I know more about you that you yourself know, Tom. You may not like my judgment of you, but it is the correct judgment. My actions, in context, are towards a very different end than yours."

"What do you know of me?" He asked, looking for a moment as though he didn't take her seriously. "Yes, a good question. And, furthermore, do you know any more of my context than you do of yours?"

"A good question, Mr. Riddle," she said, beginning to seethe. "I know the context of your actions better than you do yourself."

His features turned blank for a moment. He made to grab her arm again, but she darted away from the sofa. "What are you talking about?" he burst out furiously. "What are you hiding? What do you want with me?"

"What does Monsieur Knauss want?" she practically screamed back at him. And thought, viciously, "Legilimens."

And she had her answer. Tom looked astonished.

"You used Legilimency," she said.

"And you!" Tom shouted, all composure recovered. "You just did the very same thing to me." He started to walk towards her again. "Do you think I'll be able to do the same to you?"

"Fine, then," she said, drawing her wand in a furor. "Let's discard the pleasantries." She leveled her wand against him. "Let's see if you think you can get off a spell before my own hits you. Furthermore," she said, drawing a stoppered bottle out from a pocket in her robes, "I can stay up for two weeks on this, and I have the nerve to do it." She held his eye steadily for maybe the first time, because for the first time she felt fully prepared against him. "Watch this." She sent off a dispersimplantation spell, sending the liquid from the bottle directly into her blood stream. It was a spell discovered in the thirteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, allowing its wizarding faction to refrain from disease and exceptional aging. She explained the spell to Tom. "I am prepared to defend myself."

"Are you really?" Tom didn't draw his wand, and didn't look particularly intimidated. "To Dippet? To the school? To anyone who bothers to check into the supposed facts of your history? To me, after we leave this shack?"

Hermione was tempted to obliviate or confund him for a moment. She was amazed at the new person this white anger made her. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, just don't try anything."

Tom smiled placatingly and leaned against a sofa. "Are you even French? You do sound so English."

"Practice," she said through gritted teeth.

Tom merely gave her an appraising look. "I didn't know you killed," said Tom. "Not until I saw the look in your eyes when I said it." He hesitated. "But I know you wouldn't kill me. What you don't seem to realize is, nor would I."

For a moment the room felt like a jungle. She felt her cheeks flush and her hair prickle in response to it. "Warming spell," she said."You got past my shielding charm."

"And I got a spell off before one of yours hit me."

"Yes, furthermore," she echoed, feeling a bit woozy from the sudden onset and departure of heat. "And you wonder why I don't trust you."

"I never asked you to. But do notice that I did not choose to use Legilimency."

"How'd you do it?"

"What?"

"The shielding charm. How'd you get past it? I'm assuming you endeavored to." She paused. "I might be expecting a bit much of you, though."

"I listened to your heartbeat."

"Oh."

"The spell goes in time to it."

"Right."

"Of course, the spell itself must have a really quick impact time, to squeeze into that little moment in time."

"You've really thought this out."

"I do like a challenge."

"Will you stop?" Hermione finally said.

"Why?" he asked. "I thought you had the nerves for this."

"You," Hermione growled, propelled towards him in the thick of a sudden flash of anger like she'd never felt, "are a horrible boy, who can do nothing but make everything... turn to shit, whether it is already or no--" dimly, she realized she had a fistful of Tom's cloak, and another hand was around his throat, but the rush of adrenaline kept her from caring.

Tom's face was still calm, even if his eyes were fixed on her like he was trying to pin her. "Oh, you were picking daisies the night you came here, were you, Potter? You've killed. You've used Imperius and Legilimency against others. We've established that. You're no better than I."

The muscles in her fingers seemed to disappear and Tom extricated himself from her grasp.

"And just what is it you're trying to accomplish here, Miss Potter? Make everyone love puppy dogs as much as you? It certainly isn't that pathetic excuse of apprenticeship, if for no other reason than that you clearly are better suited to Defense Against the Dark Arts."

The adrenaline rush had passed, taking with it all her blood and energy and courage. She sank a bit in her stance, and Tom caught her by the wrists. "And what does it have to do with me, Mione?" His eyes wouldn't let go of hers, and she couldn't manage to make hers let go either. She tried to make herself breathe. She couldn't lose it now. This was a vital moment. "What do you want with me?" He waited, staring at her, and for an interminable moment she thought she was lost, thought she would fall to her knees and give everything up, and he was so close, too close, and then... Then, he was closer. "I wasn't playing, Mione. I know you've had it in for me, and still--" he broke off. The left corner of his mouth twitched, breath hot against her mouth. For his mouth was near her mouth, and then Hermione knew she was lost.

"I don't," she whispered, and as she said it, her lips brushed against his, and his mouth closed over hers, and she didn't back away, didn't resist, let him press his mouth against hers and breathed into it. Her eyes closed and she felt his warm breath in return, and she leaned against him even though she knew she shouldn't. And then he had his hands wrapped in her hair, inclining her against him more, harder. She let her mouth open more, outlining his more exactly, and he pressed his lips so they slipped against hers, and she sighed against him, suspended her body against his, everything suspended.

"Mione," he mumbled into her mouth, and his tongue slipped into hers and she met it, pressing against him harder, uncaring. Though she knew she should care. But she was lost, gone. And it was lovely. She drew her lips closer again, while his drew apart, and drew them together again, catching her lower lip in his teeth and suckling it. Her knees buckled, she fell, and he fell with her, then caught her. Stray fingers brushed against her cheek, leaving ticklish tendrils of electric warmth in their wake. They traveled down her neck, traced her collar bone, and settled at the depression in its center. She brought her hand to her face, tracing the pattern and resting against his own hand. He drew apart from her for a moment, and she opened her eyes on their hands, one over the other, so human, so much a thing that had been repeated over and over.

And then her gaze drifted upwards. She saw his face, his cheeks slanting sharply down towards his eyes, which was dark, and then his mouth, which was burning, and she remembered exactly who she was kissing. "Stop. Please. Stop."

"Can't go through with whatever it is if you like me, is that it?" he rasped.

"No!" she protested, her words strangled, nearly a scream. She regained her legging. "I can't--you're--you're--" She didn't go on. She couldn't go on with him looking at her like that, his eyes hooded and unblinking. He smiled and brought her close and kissed her again, lips pressed softly against hers. She knew it was him, it was Voldemort, it was the Dark Lord, who had killed, who hated muggleborns, who was muggleborn, who was a boy, who was frustratingly intelligent and duplicitous but not evil yet, nothing next to what he would become. And whatever had broken inside her wasn't up to mending yet. She was tired, and alone, and scared, and close to failure, and she couldn't stop kissing Tom. Every time she opened her eyes and saw his face a wave went through her, and once his curling hair fell to her forehead and tickled it. He kissed like he was hungry, like he hadn't eaten for a long time. And she fed him.


	14. Chapter 14

_She is in the kitchen of her parent's house. The light is golden, and warm, and it coats everything, like syrup. She is bringing in her bags from the van, which is in the garage. She hasn't compacted anything, and she has a lot of things. So many things, she can't believe they all fit in the van. Her father is helping her unload them. He smells like aftershave. He comes in with a stack of books._

_"You know," he says, "You didn't read any of these here."_

_"It's because I was never home. I was always at school."_

_"Or at the Weasley's," her father agrees._

_"If I had known, I would have spent more time here." Known what? She thinks vaguely, but her father gives her a look of understanding all the same. She smiles back at him. She had never let herself really love her father, the way she did with her mother. She'd always held back. She doesn't now. She looks him in the eyes, and he puts a hand on her shoulder. And he turns, as her mother walks in the room._

_"You're finally done," she says happily._

_"Yes, no going back to Hogwarts. I'm never leaving you again." And it feels so good to say she nearly cries. She'll make up for everything, now. Make up for what?_

_"Anyway, your friends are all here," she says._

_And, suddenly, they are. Harry, and Ron, and Ginny, and Neville, and Luna, and Parvati, and Padma, and Lavender. The table expands to accommodate all the members of the DA. And then the Weasleys are there. And then, just as suddenly, it is just Harry and Ron. Harry and Ron and her. Like it should be._

_Her mother is standing close to her, now. "Your grandmother misses you."_

_"How do you know?" Hermione asks. But there she is, standing behind her mother, in a business suit and pearls. "Oh." And then a stray thought occurs to her. She asks it jokingly, in case it might offend. "But wait, mum, you're not dead, are you?"_

_Her mother, looking steadily at her, nods._

_"We're all dead, Hermione," says Ron, at the table._

When she woke up, her cheeks were already wet. She pulled the covers around her and huddled into them as a wave of guilt rolled over her. How could she have spent so little time with her parents? She'd even missed vacations, winters, so she could be with Harry and Ron. And they'd been so sad, and gray, and they'd hardly known each other. A sob escaped her, and another. "I'm sorry," she moaned into her pillow. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And then, as she started to notice how hard her bed was, she remembered where she was. And then she was really sorry. A hand was on her.

"Mione?"

"Oh, God," she whispered, sobs cut short.

"God?"

That stupid, horrible hand, going around her now.

"Mione, what on earth is the matter?"

She sat up, wiping her cheeks. Her lungs felt too small to do anything they'd been invented to do. "Please-" she whispered, and gasped for air. "Get away from me."

Wisely, the hand moved away, but she could feel him near her, too near. "Mione-"

"Stop, just stop--" She stood, and tried to breathe in again, but the air wasn't going in all the way. Tom knelt on the floor, brows furrowed. She turned away from him, walked away from him, and realized she couldn't leave. And then it became even harder to breathe. She walked to the window. No one was out there, and no one had come for them. It still wasn't safe. And there were the wards to think of.

And it had been so nice, to set up the wards with Tom. Tom, with his rumpled hair, and young, handsome face, who had let her take most of the blanket they'd transfigured out of the couches. She couldn't quite see him as Voldemort. But that wasn't it. She'd always known he was Voldemort, thought the name over and over again when she was kissing him, and that still hadn't made her stop. "I need to get out of here," she said, shakily.

And Tom stood, ready to be of use. He looked out the window, visibly forming a plan. "It's still not safe, but there are other shielding charms, and we could make a run for Hogsmeade-"

She turned away again, trying not to listen to that voice. It was so deep and rich sounding. And, to be sure, not that quiet, calculating tone he almost always used. It reminded her of all the places he'd touched. And she'd pressed back against him, could feel the ghost pressure of his body against hers, and the ghostly remnant of its heat. She couldn't breathe.

He was closer, now. She turned without thinking, bloodless and in the beginnings of a real panic. She felt like she was going to fall. He seemed to think so too, because he made a move to reach for her. With a surge of panic, she stepped back. The line between his eyebrows reappeared, and he made a move to step again.

"This was all a big mistake," she whispered. He didn't respond. "I need to get out of here."

"I've thought of something," he said. "You can transfigure earth into air, right?"

"Of course."

"We can make a tunnel into the Forbidden Forest and go from there to Hogswarts."

She was still too close to Tom, so she backed up until she ran into a wall. "But we'll have to make a hole in the wards."

"Yes, that's the sticky part." Tom sat in the chair he'd transfigured for himself the previous day. He tapped on his teeth. Hermione closed her eyes and stood where she was standing. She heard him leave his seat, and when she opened her eyes, he was drawing a circle onto the floor. He had an intense look that made her disinclined to interrupt him. After much consideration, Tom drew his wand and directed it to the middle of the circle. After a moment, the circled area glowed and faded. Then Tom cut the wood out of the floor in a neat circle following the same lines. He turned to her. "I'll need your help for this to go faster." Then he turned back to the floor and began to transfigure the earth beneath into air.

Hermione felt herself walking slowly towards Tom. There was nothing for it, after all. She felt paralyzed, by what she'd done and what she was facing. After all, she was going to have to find a way to tell Dumbledore about Monsieur Knauss. By the time she reached the circle, she had a headache and Tom was already waist deep in it. She pressed a hand to her forehead and aimed her wand to the right of his feet. A pocket appeared in the dirt.

Tom looked up. "I figure we can go about this in angles. "You aim in front of me and I'll aim in front of you."

She did as he said. After four or five castings she could see the efficiency of the plan. She focused on the spells and tried not to think of how close she was to Tom.

Tom turned back to her once and said, "Whatever it is, I think you've got the wrong idea about me."

They were a long way away from the hole in the Shrieking Shack by then. Of course he would pick a time when she couldn't run away to talk to her. He'd already turned back to cast another spell. Hermione bit her lip and closed her eyes. "There's a lot you don't understand," she sighed.

He turned back abruptly. Hermione stepped back in surprise. His face was a mask of calm. "Why don't you explain it to me, then?" She couldn't answer, and he was waiting for an answer.

"Stop," she said wearily. She shut her eyes again. A hand encircled her wrist.

"What if I don't?" came Tom's voice. Hermione opened her eyes. His were close, and she was looking right at him when she opened hers. She could feel warm breath tickling her chin, feel the warmth of his hand on hers. Tom's eyes seemed to soften, somehow, and he let go of her wrist.

"If you don't let me alone I'll hex you into next week," she said softly, feeling up to no such thing.

Tom gave her a brief smile and turned back to the tunnel. "That's my girl."

They ended the tunnel somewhere at the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest, in plain sight of the Whomping Willow. Tom had let her alone the whole way, and walked next to her towards the castle in silence. He only spoke when he asked if she wanted to go to the Hospital Wing. She replied that she was going to see Dumbledore instead. Tom walked her to the entrance. As the staircase descended, he took her little finger and swiftly pressed it to his lips and whispered, "You can't pretend anymore, Mione." She looked back at him, and disappeared into Dumbledore's office, which had been left open for her.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dumbledore's office was empty. Hermione blankly made her way to a chair and sank into it. A few minutes had passed when she managed to shake off her stupor and make a closer survey of the room. It changed every time she entered, except for the dratted Lemondrops. They were sitting in the dead center of the desk, next to a scroll wrapped around a spangled banner. It looked familiar, for good reason. It was the very same banner Dumbledore used on his scrolls. She stood to get a closer inspection of the scroll. For the most part it was tightly curled, except for the heading, which read, "Dear Myself--" followed by sentiments which went unread, for Dumbledore entered practically as soon as she approached the desk.

Surprised, she gasped, swallowed, and said, "Professor Dumbledore, I didn't mean to--"

Dumbledore calmly went to his chair and sat in it, as though he hadn't just caught her attempting to eavesdrop on his letters. "Ms. Granger, how nice to see you. I was wondering when you would be coming back."

She sat down again, twisting her fingers together. "Professor," she began, "Do you remember how you were talking to a Frenchman during one of our sessions?"

He gave her an intent sort of glance. "Monsieur Knauss?"

"Yes. He was in Hogsmeade yesterday. Did you know?"

"Yes, I did."

Hermione was momentarily struck dumb by this pronouncement. "Then you must have known that he followed me, chased me, and attacked me."

"Yes," he said, waiting patiently.

Hermione shifted in her seat. She should be telling Dumbledore about how Tom was involved with Monsieur Knauss now, about how he'd used legilimency. But those truths were too tied in with her own infringements, too vulnerable. So she said, "So you know Tom was there."

"Yes," he said emphatically. "I know Tom was there."

She immediately wondered how much he did know. "Why didn't you help us?"

"The wards you put up. They blocked all communications. Owls, the Floo. We picked off Knauss and the rest this morning. They're all quite well dealt with."

"Who were they? What did they want with me?"

"It is obvious, Miss Granger. When Tom Legilimensed Monsieur Knauss in regards to your involvement in Alsace, he became aware of your presence. Inevitably he would discover that you were said to be involved in the skirmish in Alsace, and find value in bringing you to Grindelwald, dead or alive. Monsieur Knauss is a spy for Grindelwald, and his ambitions know no bounds."

Hermione cleared her throat. "How exactly do you know? All that?"

"I have my ways, Miss Granger. I hope you see how unfruitful your involvement in Tom Riddle is."

"But I didn't--I mean, he just kept--"

Dumbledore held a hand up. "Miss Granger, you have put an Unforgivable Curse on a student."

Hermione decided to stare at her lap.

"You have used Legilemency on a student."

"I know," she said.

"You have murdered. You have fought in confrontations, in perilous conditions. You have experienced more violence than the average person your age. I fear you have lost perspective, that you find yourself indentifying with Tom, that you may be deceived by his youth. I urge you to take a fairer path from now on in. Release Pendrake Malfoy immediately, or you will be expelled from Hogswarts to carry out the rest of you project on the grounds."

"I will, Professor Dumbledore," she said, and quickly added, "And I'm very sorry."

"You are under great pressure. I beg you not to fall under its weight."

"Are you under very great pressure, Uncle?" Alicia asked the steaming head in her dormitory's fireplace. He had his head propped on his hand, so the back of his palm was in the fireplace, too.

"Alicia, my dear," he said wearily, "You wouldn't understand."

"Uncle, I can be of help to you. I promise I will be, if you let me."

He looked behind him. "Promise me that one of us will kill Bellonia in our lifetimes."

Alicia bit her lip, willing herself not to cry. She knew he was telling her to do it for him, to avenge him. He looked behind him again.

"I have to say goodbye," he said hurriedly.

"Uncle--" she cried.

Monsieur Knauss knew even before he retracted his head from the fire that someone was in the room. He just didn't know who it was. He had expected perhaps one of Grindelwald's upper henchmen, Karkaroff or Stein. He knew he wouldn't be getting out of this. He was damned both ways, once by Dumbledore and once by Grindelwald. There wasn't even a fissure for him to escape through. He'd thought, before contacting Alicia, that it would come exactly to this. Luckily, Bellonia had left the Pensieve at his apartment, and he'd left something in the Penseive.

It did seem cruel for them to send Bellonia after him. She was wearing black. Bellonia Zabini wore black on very few occasions, and it always meant one thing. She inclined her head. "Monsieur Knauss," she murmured. "I would be very disappointed that you did not include me in your operations if you had not bungled them so fantastically."

"Oh, you do have to gloat, don't you?" The funny thing about this whole adventure was that still, no one but him seemed to realize how important the girl was. He would die, and she would escape through the cracks, and likely be responsible for Grindelwald's fall. Well, if he would already be dead, no one else's fall mattered to him. Except for Alicia, of course. "You fools," he whispered softly. "You're sticking the knife in yourselves."

Bellonia glided forward. "Oh, don't be so silly, Monsieur Knauss. Far be it for me to use something as primitive and messy as a knife." She smiled. Her lips were perfectly formed, and glistened with red. "They don't call me the Black Widow for no reason, after all." She came very close to him and extended a hand to his face. "Let's do make this a pleasant experience, Monsieur Knauss."

Knauss shivered a bit, it having grown cold in the room. Or it was the cool breath of death, reminding him of how soon it was coming for him. His hand in his pocket brushed up against death's cool breath and touched metal. He turned away from Bellonia. She wasn't the only one with some knowledge of poisons, after all. "I have always preferred life's more unpleasant things, if truth be told," said Monsieur Knauss. He plunged the poison-tipped blade into his torso, and came as close as he ever would to a victory over Bellonia.

And Alicia knew when it happened. She knew Uncle Knauss had turned to face his murderers, knew he was unable to stop them. She turned to the blue of the long Ravenclaw Corridor, which ended in a window. Before it was the Grey Lady, weeping into her hand.

Tears rose to her own eyes. Whenever a death occurred in the family of a Ravenclaw, especially one with a lineage like Alicia's, The Grey Lady would appear to them, weeping. It was why so few students sought her company. The moonlight made a silhouette of her, an inhuman ghost. Alicia rose slowly to her feet. She crossed the Common Room into the Corridor, and made her way steadily down its depth, a question delaying her mourning. The Grey Lady was still weeping when Alicia made her way to her.

"Lady Jane?" she asked, calling the ghost by her real name. This caused the ghost to look up, her face wet with ghostly tears.

"I remember your forefather Albion." She turned her face back to her hand.

"Who did it, Lady? Please tell me."

The Grey Lady stared at her hand. "I must not say."

"For Grandfather Albion," she implored.

"Himself," she whispered. "But there was another." She said it quickly, as though doing it quickly did not violate the precept as much. She began to weep again, and faded until there was nothing but moonlight left.

And Alicia knew she would find her Uncle's murderer. There would come a time when all who had transgressed against her family would pay for their crimes. And she knew that Dumbledore, being a friend of her Uncle, would certainly come to her aid.

-Lord Voldemort.

-Tom. Such a common name, Tom.

-Yes. I always did think that.

-I know you better than you know yourself.

-She said the same thing.

-The girl.

-The girl.

-You have come for answers.

-I have found answers, Lord Voldemort. This is your chance to help me.

-Do I exist?

-... What?

-I am an I. I feel myself, my presence, my identity. Why is that?

-You're an avatar. There were spells--but you know them. You know how you were created.

-Yes, yes I know.

-Why do you ask these things?

-Would you like to know something, Tom?

-It is why I came to you.

-You are quite powerful. So much so that you do not even realize the extent of your power. Which is, of course, a weakness.

-Get to the point, if there is one.

-Your spells are sometimes more effective than you mean them to be. You mean to create an avatar, for instance, a symbol of a perfect being, who can instruct you, form you into an image you have created for yourself.

-But I have created something rather different than that, haven't I?

-Oh, yes.

-What is it that I've created, then?

-You've created something with its own resources, its own powers. A sense of independence. I am even capable of magic.

-Oh.

-And I am perfect.

-Oh.

-Can't close the book, can you?

-Just once. I told you I'd give you just one chance, that I'd come back to you once more for your help and--

-You have come to me once more.

-I have come to you once more.

-Servant, be thy master.

-I am my own master.

-What is your name, Tom?

-Voldemort.


	15. Chapter 15

It was as if someone was striking a match in the wind. The match kept going out. There was darkness, and little, little bits of light. Tom and Voldemort. He'd split into two halves. One side hollow, newly created, but perfect. One side rather more complicated than that. The only person who really ever managed to put one over on Tom Riddle, was himself.

That diary. He'd meant it to be a tool, a template for himself. He'd meant to strive, and become powerful and great. Like the godlike mages and sorcerers and soothsayers of yore. He'd lived a life of misery, and thought of it as a test of greatness. He had surpassed and overcome, had tamed the bad old house of Slytherin. And then had his mind addled by a stranger. He saw it now, through Voldemort's eyes. He'd acted differently from how he would have without her. The girl. He had limited himself. But limitations provide challenge. Ah, yes, it had been the challenge. The perfect challenge for him. Find out the girl's secrets, and start to lay out the groundwork to Grindelwald, to immortality. He had been carrying with him a suspicion that she was somehow to key to it. She might yet be. He would open her up like a lock, like he was a skeleton key.

He thought maybe he could leave the diary behind. To guard the Chamber of Secrets, in a way. He had thought he might make it do his bidding. Had invested all the qualities that had sprung unconsciously to mind. Had given it enough powers to substantiate itself, to build and strengthen itself. In his absence, it had had more than enough time to make its plan.

Tom saw fields painted with blood, vast swathes of brick roads in Muggle London lined with decaying corpses, rivers stinking with flies and rot, exoduses and battles and rebellions, thousands writhing under his hands like maggots which he could crush at will. And a rush of elation at the absolute draw of it, the idea of waging war and acquiring tracts of land, swallowing land and people, digesting them until they suited your needs. It was a primal, biological drive, an old old bloodlust that was more Muggle than Magical in nature.

Poor Tom, sold his soul, cut his hand off and ate it whole.

Dangling hideously above it all the girl.

.((0)).

She had gone away. Hermione had taken three entire days off from Hogwarts. In a way, Hermione couldn't believe it. She hadn't taken a day off of school while conscious in her life. Except for when she had turned herself into a cat. The last time anyone had seen her was when she'd seen Dumbledore in his office. His disappointment, along with his threat of expulsion, had caused Hermione to panic. She had to think of something to do about Malfoy, and whatever that something was, it was probably going to involve Diagon Alley at some point. So she had hailed the Knight Bus and gone off to London. For three days.

Since she was already throwing caution to the winds, Hermione couldn't see the harm of doing it in style. When she disembarked from the Knight bus, it was as though she'd stepped into a movie. Where Hogwarts was disconcertingly the same, London was so different she felt as if she'd stepped into a movie. To begin with, parts of it were blown up. She wondered how Diagon Alley fared in wartime London during the Blitz. She supposed they must have put up all sorts of spells to keep themselves from getting bombed. Inadvertently, she realized that much of Tom's orphaned childhood had been spent going home to war. She wondered if he had been scared, like any normal child would have been, like she would have been. It was unlikely he could have protected himself much during his younger years. But Tom could never have been normal. The war must have been one of many things, for him.

Everyone was wearing stylish but functional clothing, knee-length skirts and hats and gloves. Hermione was luckily standing in an alley when she first arrived and quickly transfigured her clothing so they would mimic those of the muggle Londoners. For some reason this new world felt modern—it was in comparison to the ancientness of Hogwarts. Perhaps it was culture shock, or rather future shock, that made Hermione turn mad.

For starters, she drank. The hardest thing Hermione had ever drank in her life was Butterbeer. The very first thing Hermione did in London was stop at a pub and order a pint. It seemed like the thing to do. And the taste didn't even disgust her. It was… bracing. Then, she stole an Irish gentleman's wallet. With magic, it was simple. So simple she even replaced it less a few pounds, which she used to pay for her pint. Tipsy, she'd set off for Diagon Alley, where she immediately spotted the Spell Registry. Since it had proven very useful in turning up useful tidbits of information on Rita Skeeter, Hermione thought she'd just duck in. In her Invisibility Cloak. After a day or so of highly illegal spying, Hermione broke the muggle law as well, by breaking into the London Public Library after closing hours. As if that weren't enough, Hermione then snuck into some very nice looking apartments and took herself a decidedly luxurious bath. She then put a few disguising spells on a guest room and overslept. She snuck out of the house in her Invisibility Cloak, spotting a middle-aged bachelor reading his newspaper on the way out.

The next day consisted of much the same behavior. Filching, breaking and entered, many instances of Invisibility Cloak usage, entirely reckless, irresponsible, and shady behavior on Hermione's part. However, she did not care. Not a nonce. She was too worried about finding something out about Pendrake. The third day was when she stopped looking at his files and thought to look at his family's files. And found that his mother didn't have one. She didn't have one because she had never in her life performed a spell that could be registered. Pendrake Malfoy's mother was a squib. A squib from an utterly mediocre family. Certainly, she was a beauty, and had supposedly been educated at Beauxbatons, but this sort of thing was like a guillotine suspended over Pendrake's neck. It would ruin him, in his eyes.

Hermione reasoned to herself that she had to act out now, while she could. After all, she had just snogged the Dark Lord. Not only that, but she was guilty of a sustained, if subconscious, attraction to him. Which would have to damn well stay subconscious from now on. As soon as she thought if him, which was in an automatically cheek-burning way, she realized that she may have to start using glamours. Her blushing was getting out of hand.

So, she got it out in her nice baths and take out and those ever more lovely pints. And here she was, ready to return, relishing her beer. Who would have thought? Pendrake Malfoy, son of a squib. Hermione summoned the Knight Bus, a bit tipsy. She wondered if she'd be able to get back to Hogwarts by dinnertime so she could get this business with Pendrake out of the way.

.((0)).

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself now, you mad muggle cow?" seethed Pendrake Malfoy. This was not how their encounter was supposed to begin.

It was supposed to begin with righteous indignation. However, the short but always eventful ride on the Knight Bus left her staggering towards the Hogwarts Entrance not only tipsy but also shaken. Perhaps also stirred. Hermione had mostly regained her composure by the time she reached the steps and certainly regained it upon approach to the Slytherin Table. Tom's boys were sitting there without Tom. Well, thank goodness for small favors, anyway. Malfoy didn't turn his snotty little head as she approached, or as she talked. She made the mistake of repeating his name. He made a good show of ignoring her. She managed to give him a parting "Well, at your leisure," without losing too much of her business-like air, and had gone to her room to sulk. Had received an owl from Pendrake, and here she was, at the owelry per Penrake's request.

"Have you any idea the repercussions you face, you daft dirty whore?"

Hermione sighed, and pressed a hand to her forehead. She had a headache. "I have a headache."

"I'll give you that and more," Pendrake said. "I will expose you for everything you are to everyone. I will crucify you and deliver you to Tom. I will deliver you to Grindelwald."

Hermione sighed and turned away from Pendrake deliberately. "Well, tell me what you decide on. I'll be in my chambers, clipping my toenails."

"You—you—you—"

"Silencio." She smiled, turning to Pendrake, who was still mouthing wordlessly. "Your mother is a Squib from a mediocre family. They even have mudblood on the great grandfather's side. Great beauty, though. She has some Veela too. A regular mutt, your mother. Do you think she's got a werewolf uncle in the closet?"

Before she knew it, he had slapped her. It seemed Pendrake could be fast when he wanted to be. Physically more than mentally. He was mouthing wordlessly again. Hermione smiled, her daring increasing with a thrill. It seemed he was going to get physical again, so Hermione finited the spell and danced away from Pendrake.

"You bitch, you mongrel, you bottomless annoyance, how dare you—"

"I," said Hermione in a way that interrupted him, "didn't start this."

"It doesn't matter now!" spat Pendrake.

"Also, I don't have time for this."

"I will—"

"You will not try my patience any more, Malfoy. I can drop this on your head whenever I please, and I've been feeling more than a little reckless lately." She pointed her wand at Pendrake. "Imperius. Cruciatus. Aveda Kedaveda. All I have to do it mean them." She pulled firmly on his collar until his eyes were dead level on hers. "Get it?" And stared meaningfully.

"Fine," he finally muttered. "Fine." He ran his hand through his hair. Hermione had never seen him try on such a nervous gesture. A helpless, angry profusion of air came out. "Fine," he repeated louder, one hand pumping the air. "But believe me, Potter, I will be coming for you."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Word to the wise," she told him with her chest puffed out. "Incompetent wizards shouldn't telegraph their intentions." And with that, she turned on her heel and huffed out the door.

.((0)).

Upon waking, Hermione forgot everything she dreamt about. She was thirsty, so parched it woke her up. It must have been from the beer. She reached for the glass of water by her bed, moonlit and tempting. She'd half-drained the cup when she saw there was someone sitting on her bed. Managed not to choke. It was Tom, but it didn't look like him in the overhanging shadow and incline of his posture. Still, she knew it was Tom. She always did.

"What are you doing here?" The obvious question.

"Cleary, I've come to seduce your slippers off," came the smooth reply.

"Come again?"

He leaned on his elbow, on his hip. Too comfortable. "Or maybe we should stop beating around the bush."

"Huh," said Hermione. "So that's what they mean by a double entendre." And damn it, she was in her nightgown, which had only little sleeves on it, and buttons. Her wand was under her pillow, unless he'd been smart enough to get it out somehow. Even if he didn't mean it that way. And he didn't. But he leaned closer anyway.

"Why did you come here, that night?"

Oh, no, she managed to think, even before she felt the effects of the veritaserum. She didn't know how she hadn't recognized it. She had learned to recognize its taste. But he had done it, made it so she didn't notice its presence in her water. "You," she said. "I came here to put a stop to you." She came to herself a little, wiggled her fingers. Couldn't help but notice the look on Tom's face. Relish. He'd finally gotten exactly what he wanted.

He grasped her by the front of her dress, just crumpled the cloth in his fist. Hermione tried to pry his hand off, but she was hopelessly weak. "Tell me everything," he muttered in her ear. He let her go, and she made sure to land near the pillow. Tom had his own wand pointed to her. Ready to kill her, or worse.

"You… you come to do awful things. You become a monster, a Dark Lord. You killed… thousands of people—you, yourself, and then there were the Death Eaters. You start a war, against the muggle-borns. You killed Ha-his parent's. My friend's. And mine were killed by one of yours. I killed her back."

"It was her blood?"

"It was Ron's blood," Hermione whispered. "And you kidnapped my friend. And Ron—I came back to put a stop to you."

"Back in time? Why would you have to come back in time to stop me? Why not just do it in your own time?"

Hermione hated herself as she said the words. "Because you become immortal." Her hand was under the pillow now. She slid her fingers in narrow arcs and felt the cool smooth side of her wand.

Tom kneeling, straightened above her, darkness slipping over his face again. She could make out a wide smile.

"So there is a way," she heard him say. She grasped the wand under her pillow. "I may do whatsoever I choose, destroy whatsoever I choose, create whatsoever I choose." His voice intensified with each clause.

Hermione made her move. She whipped the wand from under her pillow and directed it towards Tom in one movement, thinking silently in her head: Silencio. Tom immediately noticed what she had done. She directed another spell at him: Legilimens.

She lost all awareness of her body as she came to see the moil of Tom's mind. She had seen his mind before, but this was nothing like before. There were fronts clashing in his mind, walls of air, storms between them, streaks emanating from the one or the other in an effort to gain control. The dark parts were winning.

"Tom," she said, and immediately both fronts noticed her presence. Hermione retreated from Tom's mind as quickly as she could. As she came back to herself, she tried to roll over from underneath Tom. It wasn't a moment too soon. He was lunging for her just as she managed to crawl away. She pushed herself frantically away with her feet, letting herself fall into a corner, but not before Tom hit her with a spell.

Crucio.

He knew how to get through her deflection spells. She'd been so busy with Pendrake, she hadn't gotten around to investigating alternatives.

She fell to the floor gasping. But it wasn't as if she hadn't prepared for it. It would have knocked not a few people out at least for a moment. She gathered herself, wand ready. As soon as she saw Tom, she let him have a taste of his own spell.

He let out a howl as her spell hit him. Good. He hadn't prepared the way she had. He hadn't lived through a war, though year after year of crises and threats. He was still only just as old as her, and he didn't know half as well as she did how to play for keeps.

But he quickly recovered, and threw a jelly legs jinx on her. Now she was no good at pushing further away from him. Thanks to Harry, a good amount of her battle skills came down to the Good Old Muggle Dodge (as Ron liked to call it). She deflected a spell, but he'd never meant it to get through in the first place. She knew this as soon as he made another lunge and pinned her to the floor, wand arm above her head, her legs jerking helplessly underneath him.

"Bet you've felt that before, haven't you? Guess people really learn how to treat mudbloods when I come into the picture. Don't worry, though, Miss Potter. I've got quite a challenge ready for you.

"Crucio."

Hermione's body lit up in pain. But she did not scream. It was a little poke, she knew. Voldemort was capable of more. He would keep on giving her little tickles, and when she least expected it, the pain.

"Crucio."

But she had practiced that with Ron, too. Hermione lay dazed from the spell, thinking distractedly of Ron, of Harry, of Mum and Dad. "We're all dead, Hermione." Hadn't that been what Ron said? "No," Hermione groaned.

"Crucio."

She'd let go of her wand. He had her pinned underneath him. He had a rhythm. He'd hit her as soon as she let go of the pain. She lay back, steeling herself, gathering her strength. She knew he would do it again soon. And, just as he was about to, she sat up in a flash and knocked her head against Tom's chin as hard as she could.

Ron would have been proud of her. Using bar tactics against Voldemort. She felt a cool hand strike her cheek. No matter. Her wand arm was her own again. "Protego!" she said, with enough force to throw Tom well over her bed. She finited the jelly legs jinx. Then she scrambled over the bed to reach Tom. He was just standing up, and had his wand leveled at her. "Accio wand!" she shouted. His wand flew out of his hands towards her, but before she could even begin to feel any relief, he'd leaped forward and grabbed the wand out of the air. His eyes were flashing as he stood. She could see red glints in them. So this was the beginning of Lord Voldemort. Had he been underneath, all along? But he couldn't have been; she had seen Tom's mind without its influence. As recently as a few days ago. But then, Tom was the greatest dark wizard of his age. Greater, even, than Grindelwald.

Hermione felt a misplaced sense of calm as they faced each other, wands pointed at crosshairs. "Stupef—"

"Protego!" Tom shouted, and Hermione dodged the volley of light, falling to the floor. Another volley of light was coming towards her. It was purple. She remembered the last time a bit of silently cast bit of purple light hit her.

"Deflecto," she said, with an otherworldly calm. Hermione was as close to dying as she had ever been, and there was no Harry and Ron around. And though if she died, all was lost—that didn't change the fact that all she could do… was all she could do. The wand was still pointed at him, and Hermione silently cast every spell she could think of in sequence: stupefaction, protection, disarmament, deflection, dizziness, the top around spell they had used in the TriWizard maze, wingardium leviosa, even, smashing a table against Tom. He deflected a good half of them, sending his spells over to her. More often than not, she simply dodged. He caught on quickly, foresaw her dodging one of his spoken spells, and sent a consecutive spell into the area he knew she'd move towards.

She felt the blood immediately drain from her skin, feeling suddenly wretchedly ill. And then he sent her a warming spell. It was almost worse than Crucio. Before she could dodge or deflect his spell, he sent a silent Accio of his own to her wand. She desperately lunged after it as Tom had done. But she wasn't as quick as him, and certainly not when she was sick. Desperate, she finished her lunge, struggling with Tom for the wand.

Easily, he caught her by her wrists, and she stopped struggling, the world whirling around her. Merlin, she was sick. She looked up at Tom's face. It was smooth and perfect in the dusky light. Somehow, that made it look more demonic than it had ever been. She could see a solid red undercurrent in his eyes.

"Tom," she whispered.

Anger arched Tom's eyebrows and set a scowl about his face. He threw her to the ground. "Don't you dare call me by that common name, mudblood!" He drew to his full height above her. "The only reason I haven't killed you already is so that I can make you pay for all the trouble you caused."

She felt completely exposed, crumpled on the ground. Weak. Helpless. But that was exactly what you needed for a feint. She put her hand out, and tried with all her might.

Hermione had never done wandless magic before. But her wand slipped out of Tom's hand quick as anything, and into her own.

Tom looked at his empty hand for a while. "No," he whispered.

"Yes," Hermione replied. What was she to do now? Killing him herself hadn't been the plan, but it was looking like the only option.

"Clever, Mione," she heard Tom say. "As always." His voice sounded so different. She looked up. The red seemed gone from his eyes. "It's my diary," he was saying. "It's in the Room of Requirement." And, as she looked on, she saw his features soften, and struggle, and grow hard. When he opened his eyes, they were red out to the irises. "Very well," he said. "Avada Kedaveda it is."

Hermione was momentarily dumbstruck. His diary? But the raised wand in Tom's hand brooked no questions. Very well. The door it was.

Luckily, the door was close to her bed. Hermione warded it from the outside on the way out, and managed to throw another over her shoulder as she sped towards the Ravenclaw entrance. Of course, it would be to the right of a very long corridor which she had to run all the way down. Hermione could hear her door behind her just as she made it to the end of the corridor. She didn't know whether or not Tom saw her or not. So she transfigured a brick wall out of thin air as she got out of the corridor. Desperate times called for desperate measures, after all. She supposed it would be just as easy for him to transfigure the bricks back into air. Damn, she really had to be more clever.

The diary, the diary, she thought as she reached the Ravenclaw doors. And, as she had her hand grasped around the door handle, she realized Tom was talking about _the_ diary. Ginny's diary. Merlin. Hermione got through the door, and paused for a moment outside of it. She probably knew far more specific spells to this doorway than Tom did. She might buy herself some time simply by pausing at this doorway and laying an intense amount of spellwork on it. Well, there were the usual wards, one might as well put those on while thinking of more substantial spells, of course. There was an old riddle spell Ron had told her about from his time in Egypt (it was the only interesting thing he really had to say about the country), Tom was unlikely to know about that. And of course the conspiracy of ravens spell. It would have a particular strength here. What else? Of course, arithmantic spells were perfectly met at this doorway, and she started with the most complicated arithmantic enclosure spell she knew, following it with keeping spells and prison spells. And then, then was when she put in the wartime spells for the Ravenclaw door that she had learned from Dumbledore. Sandwiched in the middle. After that, she thought of as many obscure spells as she could think of. Only when she had finished her spellcasting did Hermione remember how very much it reminded her of when she and Tom had set the wards at the Shrieking Shack.

The diary. Containing a supposed simulacrum of Tom's sixteen year-old self. Or perhaps it was something else. Tom had been possessed by his own creation, realized Hermione. He had tried to overcome Voldemort. This must have been how it began. This must have been where Tom left off, and Voldemort fully began. His diary. He had told her where his diary was. If she killed the diary, she would kill Voldemort. Just like Harry had killed Voldemort. Tom might have saved Hermione's life when he resurfaced. And doomed his own.

To the left of the Ravenclaw entrance the passage curved immediately, and several times, so it was easy to lose a person. On the other side it arced gently, and had long runs of straight corridor. The former was closer to the Room fo Requirements. But Tom would have to expect her to go down it. He would find some shortcut. She had to go the other way, and after all, she had bought herself time.

She would buy herself some more time. She set up a top over vector that made you feel like you were upside down until you managed to finite the spell. She transfigured a series of brick walls up, alternating with warded doorways. She remembered the Weasely twins' Instant Swamp. She remembered the spell. Her curiosity had been provoked by Flitwick's approval. That should stop Tom until he'd at least managed to Accio a broom. But he might be going another way. Hermione, having been running for a few minutes anyways, managed to flail her legs out at an uncommon speed. What was that spell? What was that spell? Oh yes, Hermes's Arrow. Hermione managed to give flight to her pace through the corridors. She made it to the staircases and managed to jump a whole story up to a swiveling staircase. Now she wouldn't have to take the long way up. She realized that she had left her Invisibility Cloak behind her somewhere, and tried to run faster, which was hard because she was still on the stairs. Good lord, they were long. Oh. It was a spell. Hermione looked behind her.

Tom was on a staircase behind her. He was at the very top of it, and it connected to nothing. But he seemed to be controlling it, lengthening it. He was lengthening it towards hers. He was stretching the middle of the staircase so she had to climb longer to get nowhere; when she looked up the stairs went an infinity higher. Tom looked darkly up at her. No, Voldemort. She saw them plainly, intertwined. She saw that Voldemort was a cask, a shell, a beautiful sort of shield. But Tom was very much the skeleton and substance of what Voldemort was. He was in Voldemort's fingerprint. He had created it. He was beautiful, and rare in the world. Perfect and cruel. She had seen it before, and somehow, it hadn't found the way to her until now.

Now, the darkness she feared was standing below her. There was nothing else to do for it. Hermione jumped. As she did, she saw an incredulous smile on Tom's face. Right. Now, wingardium leviosa. Applied to herself. And then—there. She was another story above where she had been, on a balcony. She looked down and saw a faint snarl on Tom's face. Eat it up, wanker, she thought, surprising herself. But, oh right. She was avenging her parents. Ron. Harry. Everyone. She might as well do a good job of avenging. She certainly knew how to kill the diary. She might as well make a job of it. There was that spell Fleur had used at the Triwizard tournament. Aquiforeum. Hermione let it out in full force, undoubtable dousing Tom and hopefully discrupting his balance. A wall, to block his view once he came up, and another wall, and then another Swamp, if only because she knew that the cure was much more complicated than the cause, in this case the Weasely twin's oddly genius magic. And then another was. She wasn't long for the Room of Requirement? But what did she need? Diaries? No. Books? No. Private libraries of Tom Riddle? No possible way of getting to them. And Tom was gaining on her.

A not too distant explosion told her that he was a bit past gaining on her. All right. Fine. Duel it was. She blasted the wall behind her and hid behind the wall, thowing a fortification spell on it in hindsight. The very next moment, Tom was there. His hair was wild. His skin was white. His eyes were red. He seemed horribly angular, a bizarre interpretation of his posture by an alien being. But that was just appearances, Hermione told herself. He'd done this to himself.

The very first spell she threw at him was that little purple number. Something Hermione had learned, was you became better at casting a spell after having been on the receiving end of it. A lot of the DA had been learning what a spell felt like. She immediately ducked a volley of light. A mirror. She needed a mirror. She melted a patch of stone and turned it into quicksilver and turned that into a crude mirror. The principle was the same. She carefully placed it with her foot, and as soon as it was in position, she took her shot. Dormio. Sleep, killer, murderer. She meant it with all her might. And Tom slept. She levitated him, and began to walk down the passage towards the Room of Requirement. She couldn't help but want to Legilimens him, since she didn't have access to his mind. She felt uncomfortable walking in front of him. And those to spells tended to cancel each other out. Suddenly, the hair in the back of her neck stood on end. There even seemed to be a painful humming.

Hermione turned, but it seemed to slow. He wasn't levitating anymore. He'd broken everything she put on him without her even knowing. He was standing behind her, tall and silent, and he looked right at her when she turned and saw him. His eyes were blood red, with black irises blown out so the red was a flaming circle around them. His lips were curved upwards against a tilted chin and perfect teeth. When he looked at her, Hermione felt like he was drawing a flaming hand through her insides.

She knew what she should do, and she still attempted to do it. But every spell flickered against him and died, she didn't really mean any of it. She was helpless, helpless against him. He caught her around an arm, and circled her waist. "I have you," he said. "You're mine." His face was unreal, bloodless as a statue. She tried to smile and gasped instead.

"No," she insisted weakly. "You're mine." She looked him in the eye. What else was there to do? You had to look them in the eye, even if they were about to kill you. And then she did smile. Inexplicably, it was real, it felt good. "I promise, you're mine Tom." Still looked him in the eyes. She could tell he was raring back. His spine stiffened, he refused to retreat. He seemed about to confront her. So she kissed him.

His lips were warm and insensible at first, but as she retreated from him he started to kiss her back. She retreated, looked him in the eye, and the flame was gone from his iris.

"Help me," said Hermione. "Fight back."

"I know," said Tom, his eyes intense. "But I can't. It's under the—under the owl cage over the wardrobe. It's a compartment, that it's in. You'll find it. I'll make you find it." He was growing paler, his lips almost blue. "I created it to possess. I created it perfectly."

Tom's dark eyes rolled back into his head. Hermione wasn't going to wait around and see what happened next. The Room of Requirement was just past the staircase ahead of her, in the nook to the left. On the left. It was close. But Tom roused quickly. Hermione heard him immediately, but Voldemort had gotten past Tom and was at full seeming strength. She was running, but he was already running after her, and he wasn't ten feet behind her. And soon he had caught her, threw her against a wall, smacked her with one hand and then another. He wouldn't let her get her wand arm up to do a spell. She was, for the first time that night, utterly unmanned.

And then he took her wand and broke it.

Generally, if you broke things, they were repairable enough by magical means. The exception to this seemed to be magical woods. They had never managed to fix Harry's Firebolt, and Spell-o-tape had done worse than nothing for Ron's wand. And Voldemort had just broken her wand, and had her pinned against the wall.

"You dare? You dare to stand in the way of great power in your utter mediocrity? That you would even touch Tom with your filthy mudblood—"

"And what are you, whole blood?"

"This mouth of yours," growled Voldemort, eyes flashing red. He held her cheeks between his thumb and forefinger, pressing them uncomfortably into her face. "This will be the first thing I destroy."

She didn't avoid the full weight of his stare, but the stare itself did cause not a little panic in her. Her wand was broken. She was nearly completely fucked. She stared longingly down the hall. The door to the Room of Requirement was just there, If only she could just get there. All she had was the old Muggle one-two.

Oh, yes. That was what she had. Hermione couldn't believe she was about to do this, but… With all her might, she stamped n his foot and kneed him in the groin. He backed off, doubled over, just enough for her to be able to get past him. She knew he would recover quickly. She absolutely fled down the hall, in a panic such as she'd never been in before. What if the door wasn't there? A volley of light took a pocket of cement out of the wall behind her. It was there. It was there. Hermione thought: "Hide me". She reached frantically for the door knob. Tom was only just behind her.

Then the door was open, she was in the room, and she just managed to slam it behind her before Tom reached it. She was, in at least a relative sense, safe. Hermione looked around her. It was a room unlike any she had ever seen before. In the first place the room seemed spread out infinitely past the door. Hermione could see the wall the door was in and the very high ceiling above her, but she could not make out the dimensions of the room other than that. That could have something to do with the fact that the room was so cluttered. And right well cluttered it was. Everything you could ever imagine was in this room, although the great part of it was in toy form. Hermione immediately wandered into a tangle of dressers and wardrobes near the door. A book flew over her head. She spotted dove gray wings on it. Quite a lot in this room, she discovered, was antique. This in the case of a beautiful porcelain doll that was peeking out at her from the seat of a silver bird cage. She blinked when Hermione saw her and started whistling. Hermione made her way past a row of—lava lamps, of all things. The colored gel in it kept changing into grimacing faces making obscene gestures. Then she heard the door open.

No. How could he have gotten into the same room as her? Panic struck Hermione again, but she quickly mastered it and took off her shoes. Then the ran in the unlikeliest path she could think of, plowing over teddy wolves and piles of forboding-looking books, snapping teeth and caged pets. She climbed gingerly over a pile of tables, trying not to make a sound. She could no longer hear Tom, and she prayed that was a good thing. But she had a worse and more likely feeling that it wasn't. How had he managed to get in?

Hermione stopped in front of a wardrobe with a cage on top of it. There was a mechanical owl in the cage. Under the owl cage on top of the wardrobe. That was why Tom was here. Where he had hidden his diary, was the same room Hermione had hidden herself in. What were the odds of that? And she was standing right here before it.

Well, she certainly wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. But that wardrobe was high, and she didn't have her wand. Well, it wasn't as if she was only clever with her wand. Hermione shrewdly eyed her surroundings. The tables. That wee dresser. Hermione hurriedly stacked them securely up against the wardrobe, making more noise than she had hoped to in the process. Then she climbed up them to have a look at what exactly was under the owl cage. That owl had better not be animated.

Fortunately, it turned out not to be. Unfortunately, there turned out to be nothing under the owl cage. Hermione opened the wardrobe doors topside up and peeked into them. After a quick search, she saw a small extra structure under the arced top of the wardrobe. She reached into it. She pulled out a little black book.

She looked incredulously at it, flipped through it. He was still in here. Voldemort. He must be, if he was possessing Tom, and hadn't come into his own flesh, as he'd tried to do with Ginny. He would have sacrificed himself. Or, realized Hermione with a surge of panic, he would have sacrificed her. He might still be intending to do just that.

"I can see up your skirt," she heard behind her, in the higher, colder tones of this new Tom's voice. She turned around. Hopefully, it wasn't true. Her nightgown was calf-length. Tom was looking up at her again, at a lower vantage point for a second time that evening. This time he had her at a more complete disadvantage. He smirked. "I do like to see you blush. It's quite easy to make you do. I suppose it had a sort of… virginal appeal to Tom. I believe he was attracted to the virginal only because they make the best sacrifices."

She hoped that was literally true. The diary seemed to be burning in her hand. There was nothing to do for it. "You might be out of luck, then, because between you and me—I'm not a virgin." Hermione lept off the shelf, making for a clear spot, and damaged her knees coming down on it. She forced her legs to pump despite the pain. She crashed though a thin wall of cages, Merlin there were loads of cages here, and Tom was definitely right behind her, and he didn't sound nearly as panicked or desperate as he was, and she dodged an imaginary volley of light. But he hadn't shot anything off at her. He was just running after her. Playing with her, toying will her. Well, sod that. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned around. Tom nearly crashed into her. She immediately spotted his wand and went for it. He wasn't expecting this desperate turnaround, and she nearly managed to dislodged the wand. Nearly. She didn't know if the crash was physical or magical. There was nothing but blackness, after.

_Hermione had never seen such a tempting looking bed in her life. If they made cotton out of gold, this was what the bed was made of. It seemed to be buffed with angel's breath, and spread out lengthily across the room, covered in pillows, looking to be at least three-fourths mattress. And she was so, so tired._

_But she knew it was too dangerous to sleep in that bed. She remained standing, looking at it. She wished it wouldn't tempt her so._

"_It's all right," came from next to her. "You can have a lie down for now. You need to rest." Tom seemed golden as well. He was wearing robes that seemed also to be made of spun gold. It refracted the white light in the room, and shimmered in his curly hair. _

"_No, you're lying."_

"_As exceptionally as I do lie, I promise I'm not now." His lips were downturned, his eyes sad. "Not after seeing what I become."_

"_Are you trying to trick me? I know this is a dream."_

_The corners of Tom's lips pricked up at this. "Distrustful and overly logical, even in your sleep." He gestured towards the bed. "Go ahead, sit. You will need the rest."_

_Hermione turned a wary eye on Tom. "Explain yourself first."_

"_I've managed to put a Legilimens on you without it—the diary—noticing. It seems about all I'm capable of. Everywhere I turn, magically, he has a hold on me. Of course he does. He knows me better than I know myself."_

_Hermione sat gingerly on the bed. It was much too nice. She wanted nothing more than to spread out across it and sleep. Tom sat beside her. "What is it?" she asked._

"_It's an avatar… I suppose it began with the Chamber of Secrets."_

"_I know about that."_

_Tom smiled faintly at that. "Of course you do. Did you know I was trying to kill Pendrake Malfoy?"_

"_Oi, I would help you with that, at this point," muttered Hermione._

"_Well, it was a failure from every perspective. I had no real control over that snake. It went after whoever it wanted. I created something to guide me, to shape me, so I could better seek the power I needed."_

"_Needed?" asked Hermione._

"_I was a half blood in Slytherin," Tom replied. "Silly, now, how important it seemed to have them all under my hands."_

"_Silly," Hermione repeated._

_Tom gave her a sad look. "I understand, now. I understand everything. I know what I am to become. And you must put a stop to me."_

_Hermione put a hand on his arm. "But you're not Voldemort. Not really."_

_His look became hard, now. "I created it, and did so in my own image."_

"_Do you want to kill me?" asked Hermione._

_He looked softly at her and shook his head._

"_Then you're different."_

_He wouldn't stop looking at her, as if he was searching for some clue in her eyes. "Did you mean what you said?"_

"_What did I say?" Was she blushing? Did she manage it even in her dreams?_

"_About me being yours."_

_He seemed very near, and warm, and golden. She grasped another of his arms with her other hand, and it seemed like she was putting it on solidified sunlight. "It was in the heat of battle," she said. "But yes, I meant it." She looked away. "I hate myself for meaning it. I'm supposed to love someone else. I'm supposed to bring him back."_

_Tom was looking down at his lap. "And I'm responsible for killing him."_

"_Not yet," Hermione whispered, and them looked back up into his eyes fiercely. "Not yet. You aren't yet responsible for kidnapping my best friend, for killing his parents and making his life miserable. You aren't yet responsible for creating new waves of anti-Muggleborn sentiment. You aren't yet responsible for killing my boyfriend. You aren't yet responsible for killing my parents, for turning me into a killer—and Tom, I would have that back. I would do anything to change that. You're not yet responsible for untold horrors." Her eyes blazed more fiercely still. "And you have it in you not ever to be responsible. And I'll be damned if you are."_

_There was something in his black eyes. Hope? Hermione brushed his hair back, the better to see it. It was like she brushed aside wild electricity. "Do you know," he said, catching one of her hands in her own, "I may be a bit more than half in love with you."_

_He leaned closer, and they were exchanging breath, breath made of light, breath made of fairies whispering. Then their lips touched, and it was like fire touching fire, licks of flame darting between them like two suns exchanging a solar flare. His arms were around her and it was like being enclosed in warmth itself, golden light, pooled like syrup to create them. They kissed as they would ideally, feeling as they would ideally, comforting and securing each other in the anchor of their mouths._

_Hermione barely managed the disappearance of warmth. It was so nice, she just ignored the first peals of cold. But she couldn't ignore the feeling of being sucked out of the dream. Tom was holding her hand, it was warmth on warmth, but he couldn't hold on forever._

She couldn't ignore the darkness she knew lay past her eyes or the cold, wet dripping that didn't need her eyes to register. Her eyes protested as she opened them. She didn't want to see what she did.

"Come back to play, little mudblood."

She'd been right. He wasn't Voldemort. Not really. The pale apparition in front of her was nothing like the Tom of her dreams. And she could hear something, could feel the vibrations that moved the floor when a heavy animal was in the room.

Voldemort smiled. They were in the Chamber of Secrets, now.

Darkness above, and darkness below. Darkness stretched all around her, so that she didn't know where it began, or where it ended. It was damp, the kind of oppressive humidity that preceded a storm. So close to the point of rain that the ceilings dripped. There were bones everywhere. Centuries worth of them. And she could hear something moving.

Hermione was in the Chamber of Secrets.

Before her stood Tom, possessed by Voldemort. He hardly seemed himself anymore. The possession had taken a hold of him, made him an extremity. He didn't seem to be aware that she was awake. He was looking somewhere else. Towards the sound of heavy movement. The basilisk.

Was it the same one whose eyes she had seen reflected as a child? Had it dwelt here all those years in the absence of its master? Did it recognize her? Certainly it knew her blood. Tom had said that was its sole requirement; that its victim be muggle-born.

Her wand was broken. And she was so very, very tired. It seemed impossible, that she should do anything. Her fate seemed like an unflinching wall before her. She could not kill Voldemort. She could not change the future. All the actions she had ever taken in the past, when she and Harry had rescued Sirius, seemed only to resolve the present. Ron was gone, lost. Her parents were gone, even farther past Ron. And she was so very tired. Perhaps if she relinquished herself to unconsciousness there would be that last golden vision waiting for her.

And then she thought of a pair of honest green eyes set behind glasses, a scar set above them. No. Not after everything he had done. Harry was still alive, waiting in those last moments she had seen, and Hermione was damned and damned again if she wasn't to do a thing about it.

Everything she needed was here, after all. The diary. The basilisk. And Voldemort was entirely ignorant that every ingredient needed for his death lay here. But aside from that, she had nothing. And the vibrations induced by the basilisk's movement were growing ever stronger, ever more present. Voldemort was facing it now, his back to her. Well, there was always the old Muggle one-two.

Quietly, Hermione rose on her feet. She could see the basilisk's shadowed mass beyond Tom's figure. Pure luck that its eyes weren't turned towards her. But she had to keep her eyes open. She needed Tom's wand. Breath unbreathed, Hermione came closer, watching him for any sign that he had caught her presence. Closer. Closer. A slight tightening of his back alerted her, but he turned at an ungodly speed, and had her at the end of his wand within the moment.

"Can't you tell when you've been beaten?" came his voice, but her wide eyes were fixated on his wand. They flickered up to his face for a moment, and her hand stretched out, so slowly it seemed like she was underwater. But, unbelievably, her fingers brushed it, enclosed it. Then she stamped on his foot with all her might.

It was the surprise that made him let go. The surprise at her sheer audacity. Really, Hermione was becoming altogether Harryish. Voldemort swore, but not before Hermione had his wand aimed in the right direction.

"Conjunctivitus!" she cried. An unearthly shriek told her she'd made her mark.

And then Voldemort had her again, wand prized back from her hands and burrowed into her throat. "You absolute nuisance," he snarled, face inches from her.

"Said the pot to the kettle," Hermione managed. She could feel the diary pressed in between them.

"Cruciatus," Tom whispered.

Hermione only just managed not to spasm in his grasp. He repeated the spell, and repeated it again. The third time, she flinched, her mind feeling at the end of its tether. The diary. Everything was ready now, the basilisk's eyes were gummed up, she had the diary, for Merlin's sake. The wand burrowed deeper into her throat, and she tried with all her might to struggle from Voldemort's grasp. But he was too stong. Far too strong.

"I think we've played long enough," he breathed.

No. She was too close, much much much too close. "Tom." It came out of her despite herself. But he had to come. She needed him. If only for a moment.

"Avada—"

And it was just a moment. But the wand left her throat, and his hands loosened from her wrists. She tore herself from him without looking at his face. She ran, as fast as she could, to the blinded basilisk.

"Mione, what are you doing?" she heard from behind her. Tom.

She didn't answer, and a volley of running footfalls told her that Voldemort had taken over again. But she could see the basilisk's thrashing form clearly, only a small distance away. It was so close.

Driven by an unknown impulse, Hermione veered to her right. A volley of green light crashed on the dark stones where she would have been. A whimper passed her lips, and she veered again. Another volley of green light crashed near her. She wished she had a wand to make her go faster. But she didn't need a wand, not now. She reached into her robes, grasping the diary. The basilisk was so close it could easily crash against her by accident. She had no idea how she would get the diary into its thrashing mouth. She threw herself at it, another flash of green light missing her by mere centimeters.

Unbelieveably, she had managed to grab the basilisk by its lower jaw, entirely avoiding the fangs. Before she knew it, it had lifted her bodily from the floor, and crashed its upper lips down against her hand. A red fog of pain bloomed in her hand as she felt her fingerbones crushed to pieces in its iron grip. She heard a high, cold laugh from below her.

"Just what do you hope to accomplish, mudblood?"

She couldn't hold on with her mutilated hand, but the basilisk was doing the job for her with her hand trapped in its mouth. She grasped the diary as tightly as she could, and brought it down against a protruding fang with all her might. It had caught; she drove it down further. There was a high, strangled scream from below. The basilisk flung her against a wall, and then there was only a vast, welcome black.


	16. Chapter 16

Ah, some invisible readers have poked their heads from the darkness. Thank you, thank you, for letting me see you for a bit, spunky-hyper-girl, Marissa1. Last chapter? NO! The last chapter was the last bit of the battle. We are perhaps a bit past the midway point. Oh, yes, dear readers, there are virtually miles to trod. After all, Pendrake still has some plans up his sleeve, and Alicia has to deal with Bellonia somehow or another, and gee whiz the mission must be accomplished, must it not? Mustn't Tom Riddle die? Heh heh heh. And the centaurs have a bit to do, as well. Thank you, Sailor Hecate. Oh, and I think I'll do the chapter shuffle so as not to confuse you on this bad boy. Please do not be annoyed, ellamalfy 8, for I give you this, a gift with NO CLIFF hanger. For this, dear readers, is where I really earn that mature rating I have saddled on myself. Mwa ha ha ha.

.((0)).

It was such a dreamless stretch of unconsciousness, Hermione might have thought she was dying if she had any awareness of it whatever. But she didn't. Not for a long time. She woke to a cool hand on her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open, then shut again. Opened only enough to see the blue and silver arrangements of her chamber in Ravenclaw.

"Mione," she heard Tom say, and that was when she knew it was real, and not a dream. For a brief moment, everything had seemed like a blessed dream, the whole of her travels back in time, that last battle. But it wasn't. So much was gone. She sighed, and opened her eyes.

Tom looked like he hadn't slept in a year or more. His clothes were rumpled and filthy, his dark curls unarranged and splayed across his forehead. His skin was too pale by far and seemed stretched; his dark eyes were underscored by bruises. Merlin, he was such a beautiful boy. Hermione closed her eyes again. Without realizing it, her hand went to his, and he grasped hers firmly. Her hand. It didn't hurt at all.

"Did you heal it?" she whispered.

"As well as I could. And—there was some damage, from the—Cruciatus." His voice halted, and Hermione opened her eyes to look at him. He was staring into his lap. "I nearly killed you."

She couldn't say anything to that. After all, he nearly had. She was entirely unsure where to go from here. All she knew was that everything was different, now.

"And I—your parents, your friends, your—" He broke off, then, and Hermione knew he meant Ron, even though he knew nothing about any of them.

Hermione rolled over to look at him. "Not you," she said. "Voldemort."

He looked about to be sick. "I am Lord Voldemort." And then, looking as though he was being forced to do it, he prized his wand out of a sleeve and wrote the fiery letters on the air. Hermione was reminded forcibly of Harry's own adventure into the Chamber of Secrets. And then the letters rearranged themselves in the air to spell "Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Hermione cocked an eyebrow at that. "Yes, I've known that since second year," she said drily. She settled into her covers a bit more. They were so comfortable. She was reminded of that golden bed in her vision. She looked up again. "Were you—when I was asleep—that room—was that real?"

Tom was looking at her carefully, her curls streaming over her pillows, her bright eyes set in her pink and white skin. Her eyes seemed to bear less weight than they had of late. "Yes," he said. She was inspecting her night dress, clean as if it had just been washed.

"Did you—you didn't—"

Tom could see her cheeks turning pink. He smiled despite himself. "Don't worry, they were just external cleaning spells. I wanted you to be comfortable when you woke up. And I… didn't want you to be alone. Sorry to break and enter once again."

With a stifled yawn, Hermione propped herself up. "No worries," she said softly. Her eyes flickered away. "What day is it?"

"Sunday."

She turned to him with a start. "Are you serious? But it was Friday—"

"I know," said Tom. "You needed the sleep."

"Oh no," Hermione moaned, clutching at her hair. "I have so much to _do_." She looked back to Tom. "Oh no." This time it was a whisper. "What are we going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—I mean—" She looked about to explode. "Everything's different, and there's no _time_. It's—you're—everything's different."

"Wait," said Tom, taking a hand. "Whatever it is—I can help."

Hermione looked at him incredulously. "You can help put a stop to yourself?" They looked at each other a long moment at that. He remembered when she had said it before, remembered all it had implied. She realized what it meant to him, now.

His mouth set itself firmly. "If it comes to that… yes."

She eyed him for a long while, so that he had no choice but to look back. He watched her face shift into a dozen different expressions, and realized he'd hardly seen more than three of them in her face, ever. He realized her guard had come down, and wondered if his had too. Their eyes were locked into each other. At long last, Hermione whispered, "Do you remember what you said, in that room?" That room. He remembered all too well, the way the gold had warmed the hue of her hair, and sparkled her eyes.

"You mean, that I may be a bit more than half in love with you?" He was surprised that it came out as easily as that. Hermione was blushing. "Do you remember what you said?"

The blush deepened. "That you were mine?" Her voice faltered on the last note.

"That I was yours," he echoed, steadily.

It occurred to Hermione that their hands were still clasped, that their faces were close enough that she could feel his breath feathering her cheek. A sudden, wild fear descended on her, that it would all somehow go wrong, that she would—that she _had_ ruined everything. Then she looked again at Tom, and it evaporated.

His lips were soft when they pressed against hers, his fingers that curled around her ear gentle. He kissed her cheek, and forehead, so tenderly they barely touched her skin at all. He pressed his mouth against her earlobe and she clung, weightless against him. His fingertips drew an unearthly tingle down her bare arm; his lips pressed against the pulse in her neck. After a long, painful night, the pleasure was nearly unbearable. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and drew him up so he was facing her. They watched each other the way lovers do, unabashedly and with pleasure.

Then she kissed him firmly, her hand drawing him closer along her body. Their lips parted and they tasted each other, regaining a rhythm they had already established. He was moving his hands along her waist to sense the curve. Until now he hadn't realized how slight and small she was, or not really. Hermione pulled Tom towards her so he was sitting on the bed, and brazenly seated herself against his lap, legs parted around his waist.

"Mione," he breathed into her mouth, and she felt the corners of his mouth tilt up under hers.

She didn't care anymore about anything. She kissed him deeply, desperately, searching for a bodily assurance. He shifted underneath her and she pressed against him relentlessly. He bit her lip, perhaps intending to bite his own, and it sent an electric thrill through her. She found herself clinging to his collar with a fist, lowered her eyes to look at it, rose them back into his. An agreement passed between them, and she pressed her finger into the cleft of his collar so that its first button parted from its hole. Their mouths were no longer touching, but suspended an inch from each other, exchanging hot breath. She unbuttoned another button. A strip of pale skin began to reveal itself, slowly becoming a narrow chest with a few stray curls of dark hair. Hermione could tell by the heat in her cheeks she was blushing, the heat turning into a burn, the burn beginning to pulse. When she looked back into Tom's eyes she saw infinite darkness regressing infinitely back. She pulled the musky shirt from his shoulders, holding his eyes, waiting.

A tension built as they hung suspended against each other. And then Hermione looked away, at his shoulder, like it was sculpted out of marble, and before she knew it he had overturned her, pinned her beneath him, had her head in the cusp of his hand and was kissing her relentlessly, had prized up the skirt of her nightgown to the nook of her knee and fell against her gasping and drawing a sharp gasp, and pulled at her sleeve until it tore and revealed a perfect breast, then pressed his lips against it. Hermione gasped again at this, a jolt going through her. She thrust her thumb into his waist band and he pulled the thin material of her night dress to her hips, and she could feel a definite length pressed against her naked thigh. She turned her face away and moved closer to him. He bit her neck, eliciting a sharp sigh, which made him force the nightgown lower. Looking back towards him she saw her own exposed body and hardly cared. He drew his forefingers up along a thigh and then in a crescent around them, to that sensitive inner part. Hermione forced her thumbs down, baring Tom's own skin, and he bit her lower lip and drew his tongue in an arc against the inner part of her upper lip. Her eyes fluttered, not knowing whether to open or close; Tom felt the lashes against his cheek and slipped his tongue deeper into his mouth, where her own, cool somehow, met it. She somehow cleverly managed to hook her toes into the lowering waistband of his trousers and pushed them down, taking his drawers with them. She could feel a curve so hot it burned, a soft patch of hair, dared herself to open her eyes. His body sloped down, naked and perfect. His eyes were dark and hooded, they were looking at her like she was a door to be unlocked, a secret he wanted at all costs.

Gently, he grasped the remaining bit of her nightgown and slipped it up around her shoulders. As his hand returned it drizzled down her shoulder, her breast, her stomach, her hip, the back of her thigh. He chewed on his lip, a black and white picture. Just seeing him naked made her feel as though she was falling in unbounded space. She nudged the inside of his thigh with her knee. Lip still bit, his eyelids descended and he drew her knee up. Then he followed her knee down with his fingertips, slowly down her thigh, arcing towards her pelvis, and slipped a finger into her. Hermione couldn't look any more. She felt his finger pulsing inside her, a sharp pleasure that she almost couldn't stand, because of the pleasure it promised but didn't yet give. A sharp exhalation escaped her lips before she knew it, and his lips broke open on hers again, and she pulled him closer to her, blindly seeking purchase against him, and found it. He entered her body as his tongue entered her mouth, voice tumbling from his mouth to hers as she breathed in and took him in against her. He grasped the back of her thigh again, bringing him closer to her, farther inside, and she cried out into his mouth. They danced to two different rhythms, one above and one below, one for each and one for both, diverging as they met and meeting as they unclasped, and clasped again, and again. It was madness. They both knew it was sheer madness, and neither cared. They rocked against each other, into each other, limbs pushing against each other, hands clasping, and where they met a light blossomed that was light and dark and the passion in between. And, at some point, it bloomed.


	17. Chapter 17

.((0)).

"You're right, Firelze," said Griot, pulling away from the earth end of the Searchoscope. The Searchoscope had two ends, the earth end and the space end. The other end had been launched out of Earth's atmosphere long ago, and served the centaurs by allowing them to observe the movements of the stars more meticulously. It was a human invention, a token of an interaction gone inevitably wrong, with the wizard in question limiting the centaurs' rightful domain to prevent Muggle humans from seeing what were considered magical creatures. Humans had a funny way of defining magic, however. Neither giants nor nifflers were capable of performing magic, and centaurs loathed it, since it had been responsible for their centuries-long detention.

"It does seem as though Ursula is deviating from its natural course."

"You know my lack of fondness for words like natural," replied Firelze, mother of Firenze. Despite her two centuries of age, middle age for centaurs, she still retained her beauty. Her beauty had never been youthful, and perhaps that is why it lasted. She was pale in all but her eyes, which were a dark gray bordering on black. She continued in a soft, slow, patient vice, the voice of a teacher. She had instructed Griot himself, and there was no more careful observer amongst the centaurs. "How long have I been wearing my hair in a plait like so?" she asked, indicating her loosely gathered hair.

"Every day."

"And yet, if I wore it loose, you might note it, but you would not call it unnatural."

Griot listened patiently, as he always did. Every centaur knew this argument by heart, but Firelze and Uru alone seemed to take it to heart.

"There is no nature, there are no laws. The world sometimes develops habits, which surprise us when those habits discontinue."

"Still," said Bane, "I can't help but notice the deviation coincides with the arrival of the girl."

"Eno era owt eht," said Uru, by Firelze's side.

Hermione was dreaming of Uru.

"Seno yldnik eht eraweb." And she could understand everything he said, in the dream. _Beware the kindly ones._ What was that word? Eumenides. The ones who had forgiven Orestes for killing his mother. Athena, motherless child. There was a small piece of gold light at the corner of her vision, in the dream, and she reached for it. But when it was in her hand, she saw that it wasn't a light at all. Just a little yellow ball. It was sticky.

She woke up looking into Tom's sleeping face, a terrible feeling of forboding howling through her like a scorching wind over a desert. It had the grip on her that dreams sometimes do, and when she closed her eyes and opened them and closed them again it turned, just like that, into an afterglow. Right. Just a dream.

All signs of stress and sleeplessness had disappeared from Tom's face in slumber, as well as all the usual strains and arches that made up his game face. His lips were parted, his face relaxed, and the open expression of sleep gave him the appearance of a boy. A smile rose unbidden to Hermione's lips as she felt a pang of tenderness for him. Tenderness for Voldemort, she couldn't help but say to herself. She sighed as she rose. She supposed her mind would never stop from putting things into perspective for her.

And what was she supposed to _do_, anyway? The only way to kill the future Voldemort was still to kill the boy lying on her bed. She thought of the dream again, and Uru. Of course. There was at least that. She could bring Tom to the centaurs, and have Iado plumb the depths of his future mind for Harry's whereabouts. Headed for a desperately deserved shower, Hermione bit her lip. Would it still work?

Everything had changed, after all. According to the panic-sticken hypothesis she's taken up, Voldemort had originated when Tom had been possessed by the spirit he had summoned in his diary. But Hermione had changed all that by plunging the basilisk tooth into the diary's cover. Would Harry's location still be there, if Tom was no longer destined to become Voldemort?

Hermione told the shower to start. She wished she had thought of this during their battle, she thought as a hot spray massaged her back, which was aching. But the chances were low she could have accomplished what she did if she'd brought a possessed Tom to the centaurs. The only thing to do for it now was to try her luck. Which had not been exactly good since her adventure started.

When she left the shower chambers, Tom was up. He was looking at her enchanted bookcase full of books from her time at Hogwarts. Hermione shivered, wondering if Voldemort had seen those same books, and pondering the level of damage that might have been. He turned to her.

"You brought all these books with you?" he asked, his eyes fixed on some internal spot, his brows furrowed, his mind obviously going through its morning exercise routine.

"Erm, yes," Hermione replied, reminding herself to cast a glamour on the bookshelf at some later date.

He smiled at her. "It occurs to me you know much more than I do, of necessity. It isn't often I come across a person capable of that."

"Sniffing out a challenge, are we?"

His eyebrows furrowed again. "You can't let me read them," he said darkly. It was more of an instruction than a question.

Hermione sighed again, and cast a drying spell on her hair, which reverted to its usual wild disarray. "I suppose we must take care," she said. "Who knows what the future holds?"

Tom smirked at this, then stepped closer to her and cupped her head in his hand. He leaned down and briefly kissed her forehead. "I love your hair," he said, his hand thick in it. "It's so wild."

This prompted a full blown smile from Hermione. Her ever-despised hair had found the most unlikely of admirers. Although Victor Krum had liked it as well. He never had cured himself of the annoying habit of trying to run his hands through it, which inevitably caused her sharp pain.

"Mind if I use your shower?" asked Tom, looking distinctly rumpled.

"Go to it." She stopped him as he was heading for the door. "Wait, Tom. There's something I must ask from you."

So it was that they found themselves, an hour and a quarter later, freshly showered and walking through the Forbidden Forest. Tom's interest had, in its restrained way, been piqued at this request. There was plenty in it for him, after all. He was going to meet with the centaurs, something that less than half a dozen people in the last millennium could claim without injury to show for it.

Hermione guided them to the clearing that served as neutral ground between herself and the centaurs; it would certainly be improper to go to the settlement without warning and with an accomplice. She took out the unicorn horn and blew a note on it. It was a few moments before Griot arrived, with Uru beside him. Something in Griot's face told Hermione that she had been the subject of recent conversation.

"Mione," he said diplomatically, remembering his promise not to use her real name in mixed company. Hermione couldn't say why, but she still had not revealed it to Tom, or anything else she hadn't told him under the effect of veritaserum. It seemed safer that way. Tom, for his part, had stopped himself several times from prying for information. She supposed that he only found himself on the brink of prying out of habit, and that guilt was responsible for the halt in the asking itself. It did much to reassure her that she wasn't in the midst of a gross mistake.

"Enoim," whispered Uru thoughtfully, looking from Heriome to Tom. Mione recognized her false name spoken backwards. "Niaga eno ot owt ot eno morf." Hermione was no longer dreaming, and wasn't capable of recognizing such a long string of words. She wondered fiercely, though, and tried to keep the sounds fixed in her mind so as to prize it out later. Something about Tom certainly seemed to intrigue the centaur.

"Do you remember," ventured Hermione, trying to omit as much information as possible, "what Iado said he could do to find my friend?"

Griot nodded. "What you ask is not without price, and a steep one at that, foal."

"I'm aware of that." Hermione shifted. She hadn't thought hard on what she would offer, and risked offering too much. After all, this was the one thing she was sure she needed from the centaurs. "I can give you the books about and by centaurs. All of them." She still needed the other books, in case there was some other favor that might pop up.

Griot considered, and then nodded. "Very well. I will fetch Iado."

Griot disappeared into the forest; Uru remained. Hermione glanced at Tom and saw his features translated into a look of wild pleasure that he quickly masked when he felt her eyes on him. There was nothing Tom liked better than rare knowledge and experience; she knew him well enough by now to know that. It was a characteristic frightfully close to her own. Uru interrupted her thought with a laugh. The laugh was strange. It, like his words, seemed turned backwards on itself.

"Staeper Yrots eht."

Damn. Now she had another set of unrecognizable words to fix in her mind. Tom leaned close to her. "Is he speaking—backwards?" he asked incredulously.

He'd sussed it out early on in the game. Not unlike herself. Hermione afforded him a brief smile.

Griot had returned, not only with Iado, but Firenze. Firenze was giving her the kind of curious, penetrating look that people in France used to give Hermione and her family, their Englishness somehow patently obvious to them. Hermione couldn't help but feel a faint adoration for Firenze. Not only had he proved helpful to Harry, but he possessed the same brazen intellectual curiosity that she'd had as a child (and probably still did).

Iado ventured nearer them. As he came closer, a light dawned on his face, and an "Ah!" escaped his lips, as though some great puzzle had been solved for him. Hermione glanced again at Griot, who was watching the proceedings carefully.

Tom and Iado were watching each other now. Hermione had explained about Iado, about his ability to sense an individual's future, and Tom knew well enough that he was presenting himself to be inspected so that they could find the whereabouts of her unnamed friend, who had been kidnapped by his future self. Iado still approached Tom gingerly, stretching out a hand as though to sense the future radiating from Tom. But the look on his face had turned wistful. "Yes, I can see your future clearly," he said, as though Tom could not escape it. Now Iado looked at Hermione. "Your ancestor will answer one of your questions," he said. Hermione looked to him for elaboration, but Iado did not offer it. He was peering into Tom's eyes. "Where he is, you can not see it."

"Unplottable," Hermione said, and Iado nodded minutely.

"But it has no secrets, and its founders are its source."

"There's no Secret-Keeper," Hermione said, more softly than before. "What do you mean by the founders?"

"They will guide you." He was looking at her, now. "One, doubly."

Hermione barely stifled an exasperated sigh.

"I cannot tell you what you will see or what he will see," Iado said, reading her mind. "Only what it looks like to me."

Hermione nodded. "Thank you, Iado."

Frowning, he examined Tom again, and then looked to her. He seemed about to say something, but Firenze interrupted.

"It's best to keep what Iado says in mind and, soon enough, it will make sense," he offered cheerfully.

"Right," said Hermione, looking back to Iado. But Griot was speaking to him.

"We must take our leave, foal," said Griot, to her. "There is business I and Iado have yet to discuss."

And with that they were gone, sinking back into the trees, Firenze last and casting frequent, curious glances behind him.

"Have you a bit of parchment?" Hermione asked Tom.

Tom nodded, looking intently at the spot the centaurs had disappeared to. "What for?" he asked, absently.

"Just wanted to jot down what Uru said."

"Oh?" He looked back at her, smirking. "No need for that." He took his hand out of his pocket, proffering a yellowish crystal. "A listening stone. I make sure to have one on me at all times."

Hermione grinned, then stopped herself as she realized the stone must have also recorded various of their conversations. And perhaps more. Tom seemed to realize exactly what she was thinking.

"I freely admit to having recorded you at every opportunity."

Hermione folded her arms and arched an eyebrow. "Well then, you'll have no problem recounting every instance."

Tom smiled despite himself. "The one I like best is the one where Alicia cornered you on fancying me."

"Oh, you think you're clever, do you?"

"You're quite fetching when you're angry, do you know?" He clasped his hands behind his back and strutted back out of the forest. "I'm so glad I haven't lost the ability to infuriate you."

Hermione expelled an angry huff of air. "Honestly," she muttered, reluctantly following his form. She pulled the Defense Diagram from her pocket to ensure that Aragog and her children were nowhere near. Their path seemed clear enough, merely obscured by the odd viperous vine and gristly thistle.

"I owe you a wand," said Tom after a few moments. "It's still Sunday. If we hailed the Knight Bus from Hogsmeade I'm sure we could make it to Ollivander's."

"Hang on," said Hermione. "You haven't got much in the way of money, have you?"

Tom looked sideways at this. "Erm—I suppose you look down on artibtrage?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Coming from you, it's perfectly respectable." She walked by his side, now. "Anyway, it's blood money anyway, I suppose we should put it to use."

And so they find themselves walking side by side in Diagon Alley, both of them wondering whether or not they ought to go arm in arm. Hermione found herself wondering if going to Ollivander is a very good idea, what with recognition being a possible repercussion. But she convinced herself that she bore little enough resemblance to her 11 year old self, and decides to speak French the whole time, for good measure.

"J'ai perdu mon baton," she said to Ollivander in his store, and Tom translated it for her. Ollivander, younger but still owlish-looking, blinked.

"Very careless, very careless." He pointed at Tom. "Holly with a phoenix feather core, am I right?"

Tom nodded. This did not bode especially well for Hermione. If he remembered Tom, surely he would remember her. Hermione tried to remember that day at Ollivander's, when she'd gotten her wand. Had he looked at her funny? Merlin, he was _examining _her now.

"Hmmm." He cocked his head at her. "Don't tell me what you had before."

Hermione remembered she wasn't supposed to speak English and looked questioningly at Tom.

"Ne dites pas un description."

Unsurprisingly, Tom's French was as good or better than hers. Ollivander was searching the boxes. He found the one he was looking for and gingerly extracted it from the shelves. He proffered the box, and Hermione opened it. This wasn't at all her wand. In the box was a sturdy red thing.

"Try it," Ollivander prompted.

She might as well indulge her curiosity. Hermione took hold of the wand and gave it and experimental swish. A sort of white liquid spiraled out and crystallized, then broke with a sonic boom that broke the windows in the shop.

"Perfect!" Ollivander cried, clasping his hands together. Hermione stared at him. "Redwood with a core of dragon heartstring. Not many are those who can wield a wand like _that_." And he set to mending the windows with a Reparo or two. Hermione looked to Tom. He was smiling indulgently at her.

"Perhaps you grew out of your old one," Tom whispered into her ear.

And then it struck her. She had changed. Enough to warrant a new wand. She had read of it happening to various wizards and witches as they encountered new or hidden strengths or discarded old habits. She had never imagined it happening to her. She wasn't sure exactly how she felt about it.

Tom paid for her wand and Hermione walked, shellshocked, out of the shop, hand clutched around the too-heavy weight of her wand. The sky was darkening, and it was starting to snow. Christmas hols would be coming up soon enough. She felt Tom near her. He took her arm in his. So they were to walk arm in arm together after all. She leaned against him as they made their way down the street. Diagon Alley, like Hogwarts, appeared little changed, only now, here, with Tom, it didn't bother her. She hazarded a glance his way; his angular face was looking into the upper left hand corner people looked into when in deep contemplation.

Then, in the corner of her own vision, Hermione spotted the solitary figure of Alicia Silversmith purposefully striding down the cobblestone path. She drew an inward breath and made for an alley not a foot away. Tom quickly caught on and ducked into it with her.

"What do you think she's doing here?" he whispered.

Hermione wasn't sure, but she had a gut feeling that they wouldn't get a straight answer if they asked. Hence the ducking into the alley bit. "I don't know, but it looks like she's headed for Knockturn Alley."

"Shall we follow her?"

Hermione hesitated. Alicia was the closest thing to a friend she had a Hogwarts, but something pertinent might be happening. It had been only a few days ago that she'd been attacked by Knauss. While she knew she could blame his knowledge of her on Tom, someone had to have been responsible for letting him know about the nominal story of the skirmish in Alsace. Not that Alicia was, but there was a good chance she was aware of who did. And, if she wasn't mistaken, both Borgin and Burkes had been there that day. "You she'd expect to see here," Hermione whispered to Tom. "I on the other hand…" She pulled her Invisibility Cloak out of her satchel and draped it over herself.

Tom sidled out of the alley, keeping his distance from Alicia and blocking her perspective of him with the scattered stands and posts on the cobblestone street. Hermione was able to make a closer approach, weaving her way through the several evening stragglers and sidling along to her. Alicia's face looked grim and set as she made the turn into Knockturn Alley. Hermione stayed directly behind her as she cut a swathe through the hags and bums selling various illegal potions. She followed her close enough to make her way into Borgin and Burkes without getting caught by the door. Alicia made her way straight for the counter, where a middle-aged man sat counting galleons.

"Mr. Burkes," said Alicia stiffly. The man looked up. His face briefly telegraphed a look of trepidation.

"Ah—yes. You're the Silversmith girl, aren't you?"

"Yes, you know very well who I am. You've been in recent contact with my Uncle, Monsieur Knauss."

"Um-er… Well, yes I have, in fact. How is he?"

"Dead," Alicia replied coldly. "Thanks to you and your friends, I believe."

Hermione stiffened, hearing this. Dumbledore had as good as killed Monsieur Knauss. She didn't think he'd be capable of such a thing.

"Now listen here, young lady, don't come into my shop and throw accusations around—"

"Then kindly explain how you're devoid of any responsibility.

Alicia was good, Hermione thought. She was manipulating him into giving her answers that it could do him no good to give.

"Well, to begin with, he came to me."

"Oh? Do tell."

Burke was starting to cotton on. "You don't know anything, do you?"

"You've no idea what I know," she said softly. "And I certainly know more now than you cohorts would have liked me to, don't I?"

Very good. Hermione wouldn't want to be on Alicia's bad side.

"Fine. What do you want to know?"

"I know about you and your associate, and that cow Hepzibah Smith." Burke's mouth twitched into an involuntary smile at this.

Then the smile disappeared and he sighed. "There was also Ollie Fletcher, too."

"Who's he?"

"A con man."

"Ah. And for what purpose, pray tell, did my uncle assemble such a high-grade collection of wizards?"

"He wanted to capture a girl. Bet he thought it'd be easier than it was. As it was, she had some kind of a permanent shielding spell on her—made it impossible to confound her. But he said she was good enough dead too, if we had no other choice. So maybe we'd have been able to do it, but she was with someone. A boy. And don't bother asking me their names, Knauss made a point of keeping the girl's name from us."

Alicia had the same look on her face that she did while contemplating out the intricacies of a proof. The look lasted only a moment, and was replaced with an expression of purpose. "Oh, there's no need for a name," she said coolly. "Thanks ever so much for your time, Mr. Burke. And then she turned on her heel headed for the door.

Hermione could almost swear she looked through her invisibility cloak right at her.


	18. Chapter 18

.((0)).

"This is my fault," said Tom, as the Knight Bus made a sudden turn and threw Hermione across his lap.

"Granted," said Hermione, propping herself up and steadying herself against his shoulder. "Also Monsieur Knauss's."

"Right." He looked slightly queasy. Hermione didn't know whether it was to do with this last turn of events or with the sudden movements the Knight Bus was prone to.

"Dumbledore said Knauss was a spy for Grindelwald."

"Right. I'd count it as luck that he's dead, but I don't know enough about it to say there's nothing to track it back to you.

"Dumbledore turned him in," said Hermione. She saw Tom's brows furrow at this. "He as good as killed him."

"I don't doubt he'd do it, to protect one of his favorites," said Tom, not without a trace of bitterness. Hermione couldn't help but think back to a certain conversation she'd had with Harry, about being a tool of Dumbledore. She'd have to realize at some point her Headmaster was capable of being manipulative. It's just that, to her, he was her moral compass.

"I think I'm a bit less favored of late, actually," said Hermione. "He knew everything that happened, that day in the Shr—the Shack—oof!" she exclaimed as the Knight Bus threw them both sideways and screeched to a halt in Hogsmeade. They both pried themselves off the seat and unsteadily disembarked from the bus. "He knows about Malfoy, too," she said, the sentence punctuated with a bang as the Knight Bus took off again. "And _Merlin_ I positively shudder to think of what he'd have to say if he knew about—" Hermione grasped for the right phrase.

"About you shagging me?" Tom supplied her with an arched eyebrow. Hermione blushed so hard she probably glowed, and Tom's lips quirked. "Don't worry. It's probably best we downplay it anyway." He was looking into that corner of insight again. "Though I wonder why he's so keen on your involvement with me. Surely it would play to your advantage?"

"I don't know." He was right about that, actually. He would certainly never push her to befriend Tom, but he'd been positively adamant about keeping her away from him. And the Dumbledore she knew was a Dumbledore of second chances, and other ways. He'd offered Tom several chances thus far to come clean. And now that she herself had been running circles in her head about another way to dispose of Voldemort, she realized she had no instinct to turn to Dumbledore. And she should. Tom was looking intently into the upper left hand corner of his vision. "Sickle for your thoughts?"

He turned the intense gaze to her, and she felt her heart skip a beat. "I've got a lot to make up for," he whispered. His voice was ragged. He caught her arm and locked his eyes with hers. "I'll do anything and everything that needs to be done, I want you to know that." Hermione didn't know how to respond. "I've a lot of secrets to reveal to you, Mione. One in particular may well come in handy."

Hermione barely managed a nod, and he took her palm with his cool palm, leading her back to the school. Night had fallen; dinner was being carried out in the Great Hall, but Hermione felt no sense of hunger. She mutely let Tom lead her through the school, practically feeling the electricity traveling from his hand to hers. She found them walking the familiar path to the library.

Pendrake Malfoy and Judas Rosier were in conversation at a nearby table. Pendrake fixed with with a look of hatred and Hermione nearly froze, glancing guiltily in the direction of hers and Tom's clasped hands. This was certainly a bad start to downplaying it. Tom seemed to realize this, too, since he immediately let go and disappeared into an aisle. Hermione could feel Pendrake's gaze burning behind her as she followed Tom.

Tom started to take a series of odd turns. At first, the sections were as familiar as ever to Hermione—Astronomy, Herbology, and various subcategories. Then he made a left, a right, a left, and a left. They should have ended up in the aisle where they made the first left, but this place was unfamiliar. And unfamiliar place in the Hogwarts library was certainly unique to Hermione. The spines of the books on either side of her had strange lettering on them; when she peered more closely to make out the titles, they dissolved into gibberish or nothingness: Noctologo, or dream writing. It bordered on dark magic; supposedly it was the element in Abdul Alazred's Necronomicon that drove its readers to madness.

At the very end of the left handed bookcase, was a door. The door was quarter-paneled, each square sporting a different color scheme: red and gold; yellow and black; blue and silver; green and silver. It opened to a large, five-sided room; the fifth wall was the one the door was set against. There was a table in the middle quartered in much the same way the door had been, bordered on ever side by a chair. It didn't take much puzzling out to know what this room was.

"It's the Founder's section of the library," Hermione breathed. One wall was crammed with strung-together notes and volumes coated in long-dried mud; another sported hefty, burly-looking tomes; still another had the occasional occurrence of a poisonous-looking volume. Hermione immediately knew which side was Rowena Ravenclaw's. It was filled with identically bound volumes which seemed, in and of themselves, magical. Hermione drifted immediately towards them as Tom was rifling through the volumes of Salazar's side. She wondered if Ravenclaw's shelf was full of books she read, or books she'd written, and she pulled a volume from the shelf to find out. She opened the cover and saw the Ravenclaw name at the top, underscored by a dozen other names underneath it. That hardly provided a clue.

"Tom," she began, turning to him. She nearly dropped the book when she saw the white-faced expression on his face. "What is it?" she demanded, laying the book on the table, sure he'd been poisoned by one of Slytherin's books.

"Mione," he said carefully, "you can't pull a book from the shelf unless you're descended from its owner." Hermione didn't respond. "For instance, I can only pull Slytherin's books from the shelves."

Well, there was only one proper response to a statement like that: experimentation. Hermione stalked over to Helga Hufflepuff's messy assortment and grasped one of the bindings. Not only couldn't she pull the book from the shelf; her fingers remained a quarter inch from the books themselves. "What are you saying?" she whispered, not really needing him to say it.

Tom came close to her, cupped her chin and raised it so that she met his eyes. "You are descended from Rowena Ravenclaw."

"I'm muggleborn," she protested faintly.

"Magic dies out of families," he replied, logically enough, and Hermione was forcibly reminded of something she'd said to Harry in second year, when everyone thought he was Heir of Slytherin. If you went far back enough, there was no telling who you were related to.

"I'm descended from Rowena Ravenclaw," Hermione said softly. Tom was smiling at her, his eyes nearly wild.

"Yes, and I from Slytherin. Half-blood and mudblood we may be, but we are better than all those silly purebloods."

"Don't say that," Hermione said.

"And why not?"

"We're no better than anyone," she insisted.

"Oh? No cleverer than Judas Rosier? No more quick-witted than Pendrake Malfoy? No more powerful than Adrian Avery?"

In a way, it was an appealing thought, but Hermione stifled it, and luckily, remembered something important. "Iado said my ancestor will answer one of my questions," she said, her excitement growing. "Firenze was right when he said it would eventually make sense." She started to pull down books from the shelf, already forming a layout, some sort of organization. After all, she wasn't sure which book would be the one with vital information. Tom surveyed the books. Experimentally, he opened one of them, and seemed surprised it let him read it.

"Do you have a particular question in mind?" he asked.

"Of course," said Hermione. "How to kill Voldemort without killing you." The ensuing silence made he look up towards him. His face was unreadable. Hermione layed a particularly thick volume, titled Origin of the use of the Pentacle, into a pile of books she deemed not directly pertinent. Then she went over to him.

"And then?" asked Tom, avoiding her questioning gaze.

It was a question she knew she was going to have to answer someday. There were many possibilities. Hermione could go alone to save Harry and give him the key. She could remain in the world she had grown up in, the world she knew and love best. She could go back to Ron. She could come back for Tom. That, however, was an unwise option; they might unwittingly destroy the very future Hermione sought to preserve. Even leaving Tom here was unwise; Dumbledore had already found a way to duplicate Tom; that duplicate would have to go on to become Voldemort, in order to ensure Hermione's present. The only option really was to bring Tom with her, to the future, if she wanted to save him. And then? She thought of Ron and Harry. Hogwarts and Newts and Dumbledore. There was absolutely no place for Tom in the future; he had his life, but that was all he had.

"I don't know," Hermione finally said.

Tom looked at her then, and she understood he knew all the possible consequences. There wasn't much hope, and his eyes were dark. "For most of my life, I had nothing. What I had, when you came here, I had created from nothing. From absolute zero." He took a breath and closed his eyes. "I am giving it up. Everything." His eyes opened again, on hers. "I will do more besides that, to make up for what I made you lose. I do not want what I wanted before." There was a hard look in his eyes, then, and he took Hermione's arm in a strong grip. "I want you."

She was the Heir of Ravenclaw. She had changed so much that she needed a different wand. Hermione thought of Ron and Harry, and Merlin how she wanted them, wanted back everything. She wanted Tom. She could not have them both "If…" she whispered. "If we go back… together… we will have to go away. We will have to hide from everything we saved."

He drew her closer, his grip on her stronger, and did not hesitate. "So be it." He kissed her and she was flooded, she was drowning, she had no sense of direction and no idea how to breathe. She was overwhelmed, but Tom knew how to breathe. He breathed into her mouth, and it was enough, for now, until she found her footing and knew which direction to head in.

.((0)).

By the time the week passed, Hermione and Tom had gone through nearly half of Rowena Ravenclaw's books, and Tom had written out abstracts of every one of Salazar Slytherin's. They spent so much time in the library that O'Bleeke was starting to get exasperated. There were still so many things to do. Too many. It seemed like they spent all of their free time in the founder's section of the library, now.

Tom's listening crystal lay on the corner of a table. They had listened to the conversation with the centaurs again, and put reversal spells on what Uru said. "From two to one to back again—" that was simple enough, he was commenting on Tom's recent past, his recent possession by Voldemort. The other fragment was much more ambiguous, however: "The story repeats". And then, of course what Iado said about where Harry was kept. "The founders are its source," and, "They will guide you." Well, that was certainly going right on the list of mysterious clues to keep in mind until the right sort of thing jarred it and made it make sense.

Hermione sighed. She was halfway through the last book that seemed to be at all pertinent for the sort of thing they were looking for. The time machine, the future, the past, Tom, Dumbledore, Alicia. She let herself be overwhelmed for a moment. Tom was shuffling through his abstracts and presented her with a portion of them.

"Potentially useful," he offered as an explanation, and then picked another of Ravenclaw's books to go through after a moment of intuitive speculation—this was a facet to his method of studying Hermione had been heretofore unfamiliar with. His pale face inclined over the book, his hair spilling over his forehead. He barely bothered to put it back any more, and his uniform betrayed small changes to its normally immaculate appearance. This could have something to do with him having passed a certain number of nights in her chambers. Stifling the heat rising to her cheeks at the thought, she returned to the books.

Hermione had gained a newfound appreciation for exactly how much knowledge there was to be had in the world. The book she was currently reading was a notebook Ravenclaw had kept during the construction of Hogwarts castle itself, and she knew for a fact that half the plants logged in the Herbology section no longer existed; some she'd never heard of before; all had once been in the Dark Forest not a hundred meters away. That was nothing compared to the tracts Ravenclaw had written about places Hermione had never known existed—there was a geneology of the royals in the various sectors of the sky kingdoms, for instance.

Another chapter complete. Hermione checked the time. Dinner would be starting shortly, and Hermione and Tom would have to resume their public roles of being mutually oblivious. Tom leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm going to the cave tonight." They had discussed the cave; Tom guessed Hermione already knew of it, and she even told him about Grawp (it seemed like a harmless enough bit of information to give, and she knew Tom appreciated any news of the future she felt safe letting him know of). Hermione knew, the way that he spoke, that he would be going to another of his meetings with his little clan. She wasn't sure exactly how she felt about it, and remembered the fate those boys had awaiting them: death and familial servitude. She sighed again, and found Tom fixing her with a look. "I know you don't like it, but there are things I need to maintain."

"Right," said Hermione, unable to sound sure.

"I'm to become Voldemort, after all, aren't I? After we leave? I must preserve everything that was in place before. It is a part that must be played."

It made her shiver and feel unsure, that fate they were ensuring the world of. But there was simply no other possibility. It was the deaths of people who had already died versus the potential nonexistence of people who hadn't died yet. In the case of Ron, someone she meant to save.

Tom's eyes were somewhere else and he was gathering his things together. His voice sounded tired, when he spoke. "It's hard to continue in this way, knowing what it comes to. Have you thought of that?"

"I know," said Hermione quietly. She reached for his hand. "And thank you."

He looked intently at her for a moment and kissed her, hard. Not ready for it, she gasped, and felt him slide a hot tongue against hers. She dropped her satchel, and Tom forcibly brought her hand to his face, probing her mouth deeper with his tongue, pressing her against him with a strong arm. She hung against his arm, relaxing into the kiss, a sudden jolt of electricity stirring her blood. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be in her chambers. She curled a hand around his left ear, tickling it with her fingertips, and he broke the kiss harshly, mouth moving to her neck, where he raked it with his teeth. This was practically too much to be taken, and she smothered a moan against the cool white skin of Tom's own neck, which caused him to break away again and kiss her again. It was a firm kiss, but it was close-lipped, and he briefly bit down on his lower lips as he retreated. "We should get to dinner," he said, a burn fading in his eyes. "Shall you go first or should I?"

Hermione let him go first, eyeing his retreating form doubtfully, and sagged against the table. She set her jaw. She might have absolutely lost her wits in regards to Tom, but she had to keep an eye on him just in case. She couldn't let herself trust him blindly, even if she had to force herself to act. So, after enough time had passed, she headed not to the Great Hall, but to Ravenclaw tower in order to retrieve her invisibility cloak.

She did not follow Tom and the rest into the Forest. Instead, she went to the cave before they did, and waited for them. She needed to ensure that she could enter, and that she would remain unseen. She knew she had a half an hour, and likely no more than that. There wasn't time to check every possible form of detection, but by the time Tom and the others entered the cave, she knew she had done a comprehensive job of it.

Tom looked heartened from the climb; Hermione realized he was the only one besides Judas who did not appear winded. She suspected he insisted they climb, perhaps even ensured it with magic, in order to maintain their power dynamic as they entered the cave.

The cave itself was beautiful; stalactites hung from the ceilings and sprouted from the floor, their improbable twists and arcs indicating that Tom had transfigured them. The walls were filled with pockets full of things she had not had time to examine, and there were almost machine-like things flying through the air. The workmanship of the cave indicated that Tom truly loved magic, as only someone who grew up in the banal muggle world would. It was the same feeling she had seen in Harry, one that echoes within herself.

Tom stood as the others assembled themselves in silence. Pendrake could barely contain his frustration and anger at this point, and he promptly said something stupid.

"Rutting O'Bleeke's apprentice dutifully, are we, Tom?"

Tom turned slowly to Pendrake, an incredulous eyebrow raised. He raised his wand, and Pendrake did not move. He was expecting a penalty. Hermione supposed it must have been worth it for him. "Cruciatus," he said lazily. Hermione stifled a gasp.

The jet of light leaped at Pendrake and he couldn't help but flinch. Actually, he toppled out of his chair and shrieked. But, before the light had time to reach him, it had frozen itself in place, save for a small tendril, which extended itself enough to tickle Pendrake, who shouted in pain. Tom took this opportunity to examine the energy before the group, to dissect the light itself to reveal the form and structure of the spell. He showed how it could reveal both intensity and the caster's identity. When he was finished, he returned to his place, extended the wand tip to the light, and the light folded in on itself and retracted into the wand.

"Control over one's spells, both in their dispensation and elimination, are essential. Everyone knows Finite Incantatem, and its various forms for particular spells. But to stop a spell before it hits, and to be able to take the spell back into your wand, displays a level of finely honed skill of which it is imperative to be capable."

Well, that was rather well-played, as far as Tom went. A threat, a tickle, and an immediate display of his power and skill.

However, Tom did in fact have a role to play, and it required cruelty. They practiced all the unforgivables, Cruciatus (on animals), Imperius (on each other), and Avada Kedavada (again, on animals). She knew it was necessary, but it was still like watching a car wreck occur in front of her. The worst of it was the beauty of the spellwork itself, Tom's dissection of form, of strength, of intent. His love of magic knew no bounds, and included the ugliest of curses.

And then there were the things he did to Pendrake. Their mutual animosity was no secret now; every one of those boys was aware of it, but Pendrake was still here. Hermione knew why Tom kept him here, among these boys: he was a warning. Disobey, and endure constant and artful humiliation. Under Imperius, and none of the boys could break Tom's Imperius, Pendrake was made to eat a plate of dirt, was made to propose marriage to Jean LeStrange (to Jean's utter amusement), and was made to beg Tom to take the curse off of him. He begged like a dog, on his knees, his hands catching Tom's robes, and she wondered how much Tom enjoyed the role he had to play. Hermione was glad she hadn't told him about Pendrake's mother. Even Judas, Pendrake's one-time ally, no longer felt pity for the boy. He only felt the development of Tom's still-overwhelming power. Tom was using those boys to achieve whatever goals he'd had, maybe still kept as ghosts, but his performance made them all believers that it was Tom who would bring these boys to something meaningful.

During their last quarter hour, the denouement of the evening, Adrian took Tom aside and spoke to him quietly. Hermione was too far away to hear anything, and because she was afraid of making any sort of detectable disturbance, she could not venture close. She knew it had to do with Alicia. She could do nothing to glean more, however, and observed Pendrake, proud and sulking at the same time, and she knew that he was quietly nursing an unending horror at what his life was to become under the influence of Tom. Hermione never thought the day that she would pity a Malfoy would come.

Tom stood for a long while after the group had departed, still and tall in the center of the cave. Hermione knew, after a good few minutes, that he knew she was there. "Did you find your evening's entertainments pleasant, Miss Potter?" Tom said in a quiet voice that repressed an undercurrent of anger.

Hermione sighed and let the Invisibility Cloak fall to the ground. Tom turned to her, an unspeakable look in his eyes. Hermione felt her blood drain, palpably, and was struck with a swooning sort of sensation that she'd never felt before. If she had been intimidated by Tom when she kept him at a distance and thought him evil, it was nothing to what feelings his anger provoked in her now. This, however, whether it was moral ambiguity (his or hers) or something else, was exactly why she'd done as she had, whether it was an honorable thing to do or no. "I would—" Hermione willed her voice to gain more strength. "I'd ask you to remember the matter of the listening crystal which you were so casual about not a week ago."

A short breath was expelled, and he brought his hand to his forehead, uncreasing his brow in a short movement. "That was—must I—do you really not understand?"

Of course she did. That had been before. Before he knew what she was about, before he'd fought the very thing he was to become and saved her from certain torture and death. "Of course I do," Hermione said. "Do you?" Because, he had still saved her from himself.

"I have done nothing but understand," said Tom in a dangerous tone. "I am to become—a murderer, and I may even somehow destroy this world. And—critical to all this, a theme even, is the fact of my vendetta against poor blood, which is exactly what I have. I am to become a vessel for who I wanted to be, not who I am, to the point of making what my body is, who I am, anonymous. I understand very well what the danger is." The hand fell to his side. "It is not only that I threaten others with annihilation, but that I threaten myself with it. Do you think, after what I have seen and done, even without—" The hand gasped at the air as thought it could catch whatever it was he was looking for, his eyes burning right through her. "Even without what I feel for you, which… I couldn't possibly go back. Can't you see that? I couldn't possibly want to create an avatar which I know very well would climb into my mouth and _eat my soul_."

Hermione expelled a shaky breath. "I'm sorry, but—"

"Oh, you're sorry but?" Tom cried, crossing the formidable distance between them far too quickly. "I prepare my life for you to sacrifice, I give up all my secrets, every one, and ask for nothing in return, and you're sorry but?"

Hermione felt a brief flash of anger. "I'm sorry, but your lackey killed my father and mother. I'm sorry, but your other lackey _murdered _my boyfriend. I'm sorry, but you murdered my best friend's parents, and locked him into—and drove Neville's parents insane with Cruciatus, which I forced my boyfriend to perform against me again and again so that I would not go mad if I endured the same thing. Oh, and a lucky thing I did, wasn't it, _Tom_, seeing as your counterpart about achieved it—" Tom took her wrists in his hands, grasping them so hard he bruised them, and brought her so close she couldn't look away..

"Don't you think I _know_?" he seethed.

"You should sacrifice everything. You should offer all your secrets. You should ask for nothing in return, from me, or anyone. It's nothing compared to what other people sacrificed and offered—"

"Because of me. I know. But _not yet_. I've destroyed your life and I'm in love with you. What am I to do with that?"

Hermione pried her wrists from his grasp, actual tears breaking out. She angrily wiped them away with her sleeve. "And I'm in love with you and because of that I can't have back anything that I came here to save."

They stared at each other, for a long while, counting the burdens they had put into each other's eyes. Hermione, feeling those awful tears trying to break out again, broke eye contact, feeling a hot, wet seam of tears open under her eye. She covered her eyes with her sleeve. She couldn't bear for Tom to see. Before she knew it, she was sobbing into his chest, and his arms were around her. They were strong, and they were warm.

"I can't trust you," whispered Hermione.

"No one ever has," he whispered back.

She looked up at him, her eyes burning through those foolish tears, and she said, "I _meant_, not yet. See if I don't by the end of this."

.((0)).

An ending author's note: you know this fight had to happen at some point. This is Tom and Hermione. They're not exactly a happily ever after kind of a pairing, are they? I do wonder who you find more sympathetic, as I tried to convey both their sides during the argument.


	19. Chapter 19

.3.

"Let us review," began Griot in the Council of Elders. Iado and Uru sat behind him. "First, a human battle in Nantes occurred a week later than it was recorded as occurring, in one of the texts that Hermione Granger gave us. Secondly, the constellation Ursula has deviated irretrievably from its course. We all remember hearing when an event such as this occurred before. It directly preceded the limitations of our freedom and our nature, and regardless of philosophic discussions this deviation may provoke, I feel I am not wrong to say it probably does not bode well. Finally, we noted through our contact with Albus Dumbledore that a magical child was born two weeks later than was recorded in another of the girl's books. After a thorough investigation, we found that dozens of similar incidents have taken place in the muggle and wizard world. There is but one conclusion, my brothers and sisters: time itself is changing. All that remains is to decide what to do about it."

.2.

She had a rare, pale beauty, and she was young. The closer she came, the less human she seemed, more like a figment, more like a dream. She was a pale fire, trembling and about to flicker out. And no wonder, once he learned.

"He was not a perfect man. He wasn't family. But my family… He was all I had left."

Her eyes, he realized, in the light, were a pale shade of rose. She sighed.

"The last time I saw my father, I was thirteen. I never knew my mother."

He was amazed to still see hope in her eyes. They were in France, doubly fallen France, and that light had gone out of everyone's eyes by now, even if you were on the right side. The side of blood. It was a pale fire, and it threatened to go out. It asked for something to feed it. "How long had it been?"

"A week," she whispered. "Two."

.((0)).

"Alicia," came Adrian's voice from behind her. She was shivering in the cold air, on the Astronomy Tower. She wasn't sure why she'd even sent him an owl. There wasn't anything to say. Now that he was here, she didn't feel like facing him. After all, what was he to her? A distraction, nothing serious.

His hand was on her shoulder. "What's wrong, love?"

Did he love her? It was unlikely. They were all of eighteen. Alicia was one of those people who always felt older than she was. She remembered a moment in her childhood, when she heard her father planning his retirement and worried about her own, before remembering that she was nine.

"Why don't you look at me?"

Because she was worried she was right. She needed someone serious. She needed something unconditional, acceptance if not love. "Monsieur Knauss… my uncle. He is dead." She looked up at him at last, and whispered, "He was working for Grindelwald."

Adrian sucked in his breath, blue eyes sombering. "Alicia, are you safe?"

"Of course," she murmured.

He drew her towards him, folded her into his arms. "You'll be staying at the Manor over the holidays, of course."

She smiled a brief smile that Adrian didn't see. "That's nice of you, but I have other plans."

.((0)).

"Have you any place to stay?"

She did not answer for a long time. She wore expensive, pale blue robes, and he knew she could not deign to answer. But he could see that here hair was tangled, that she had few belongings with her. Great wealth, generations of it, gone within the space of weeks. It was the sort of thing they were fighting against. It was a fate that shouldn't befall a family such as hers. The kind of family he shared.

"I do not have family, but I have friends." He knew that she was lying; she did not do it well. He saw how her bare hands curled by the fire in an attempt to reach their warmth. She smiled, and it was the shadow of a smile. "Do you know, I usually reveal nothing of myself?"

"And I a stranger," he said.

"But a handsome and well-bred one," she said softly, "And one who wears His mark."

No one on such a side should fall so far.

"My name is Alicia."

"And mine Gabriel."

.((0)).

Adrian accepted Alicia's explanation that she was going on an excursion to collect certain belongings of Monsieur Knauss's. He was nervous enough that she was venturing into France under Grindelwald's occupation. They both knew well enough that her family name was protection enough, but Adrian didn't want her involved in bloody politicking, especially after what had happened to Monsieur Knauss.

Adrian had insisted they stay at the Inn at Hogsmeade the days before school let out for Christmas holidays. They talked quietly, sipped wine, and lay in the comfort of each other's warmth under the covers. He didn't ask anything of her besides that, comfort. But he never did.

"Do you remember when I first saw you?"

"Oh, that tedious gathering of father's."

"You hardly seemed human."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I've never seen anyone as beautiful as you, and I do not think I yet will."

She smiled at that, his compliments a comfort.

"The other girls…" said Adrian.

She didn't care about them, and never had done. After all, Adrian was a comfort, but not real, not family. She expected nothing of him because that was easiest. And besides, her own plans required the freedom between them.

Adrian cupped her face in his hand and gave her a tender look. "I've never done anything with them besides kiss them, you know. Everything I want, I want sublimely. And you are the only one I know capable of sublimity."

Her heart pulled in two directions at once. If only he'd said it afterwards. But then, it was exactly what she needed. She needed someone to love her, since there was nobody left. Alicia closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said, and gave herself to him in her heart. For afterwards.

"I'm going to marry you someday," he said.

.((0)).

Later, the girl lay underneath his sheets, drifting after being lost in his arms. He would do anything to bring her back to him.

"He was planning something, I know. He was endeavoring to bring something to Grindelwald. I do not know what it was, but I know it was important."

"What happened?"

"He was betrayed by a woman he worked with, a woman who doesn't hold any loyalty to the Blood. I know this because she killed my father before he could leave an heir. I believe she is working for the other side, that she could not allow the information to get into Grindelwald's hands."

"Who was she?"

He could not see her face; a shining curtain of hair obscured her profile, so he did not see her faint smile. "Her name is Bellonia Zabini." She sighed. "But she… I know enough of her status at the Ministry to know it's useless to waste my efforts."

"It occurs to me that you do not know my full name."

The profile turned; hair parted to reveal the cool curve of her face, her skin nearly silver, her hair nearly white. "I'm sorry, Gabriel. I have spoken of nothing but myself and my troubles tonight. I am not quite myself, but I can come to be again." And she reached a pale hand towards his. "What is your father's name?" This was how the ritual they used in their world, how mothers taught daughters to ask.

"LeStrange." He could move the world for her, if he so chose.

But of course Alicia knew. She was a white fire, no mere candle's flame; she was not the moon but a star, a strong light made deceptive by distance. No one's breath would put her out. And she could put the darker flames out with only a whisper.

.1.

An owl had come to Hermione after dinner. "Let me help you bring the books to the centaurs." Hermione had smiled at this. Help indeed, Tom. She knew he had only volunteered so he would have another chance to observe them first-hand. Hermione might have a love for knowledge in and of itself, but Tom loved obscure knowledge, knowing things others didn't, secrets. She did not know if it was because of power that Tom sought this kind of knowledge, or if it was love of such knowledge that drove him to power. Then, she didn't really know Tom at all. She'd been a bit foolish for thinking she even knew a bit of him.

Since the incident in the cave, they had not spoken. O'Bleeke was working on the Time Machine again; its impending completion hung suspended over Hermione like a pendulum. She taught their last classes in a trance, now, Tom's burning eyes putting out all the other lights in the class. She would have to make hard choices soon, and if they didn't figure things out, soon, she wouldn't have a choice to make at all. She would have to kill him. She wondered if he knew that she would kill him if she had to. Probably he did; it was the thing that hung suspended in between them. But, if she could bring him to the future, if they could kill Voldemort and not Tom, she would choose him. Harry and Ron were drifting further and further away, and she might not ever see them again. In a way, she might never return from this time.

Hermione sighed and tore a piece of parchment from her scroll. "Meet me at the edge of the forest tomorrow after classes." The last day before the Christmas holidays. She rolled the paper up and put it into the owl's claw. It hooted, demanding a treat, and she absentmindedly fed it one from the box on her windowsill. It flew off into the night, west of the crescent moon. It was strange, sometimes when she looked up at the sky now, it seemed the very stars had changed.

Tom was killing things in his cave when the owl arrived. More properly, he was trying to kill a niffler who had imbibed unicorn blood that Tom had gotten off the blackmarket. There were probably dozens of problems Mione would have with what he was doing, but he was doing it for her, for them. He knew that he might have to take steps she would refuse to in order for them to succeed. Nothing they had said in the cave changed any of that. He would do what he had to so long as he knew she would do what she had to. He did not want to die, and she would not, probably could not, stay here. Not with Dumbledore alive.

And there was the crux of his problem. Dumbledore. Tom had always been defensive and distrustful, and had never been exactly likeable. Charm was something he had studied and learned, along with the fact that people who had known you for five years were capable of treating you like someone utterly new under the right circumstances. Tom had changed, sixth year. It had been a metamorphosis not without struggle and pain. Dumbledore had no appreciation for this; he believed people were who they had been at eleven. And if he suspected the things Tom had done, he could never understand them, or at least forgive them as Mione had. Especially if he knew what Tom would become, which he had for a good five months now. And it was Dumbledore, in the future, who was responsible for this entire situation to begin with. Tom was not sure he was grateful. What Mione had told him, what he had done to her, what he had seen himself as, had been unbearable. But, before she had come, the future had stood before him, infinitely malleable and infinitely possible. Tom wanted it back more than almost anything.

But he wanted one thing more, and it had taken the Founder's library to show him that. Previous to her entrance into his world, Tom could only think of other people as holding him back with their limitations. Mione, however, seemed to have no limitations whatever. She had survived horrors and was able to meet him on equal ground. Her fight with Voldemort, with him, had proved her an equal or more. But it was the inheritance of the mantle of Ravenclaw heir that she became something else. Before, she was like a wound in his mouth he couldn't stop prying at with his tongue, a distraction, someone who made him lose his bearings. Now, she was someone he could see himself accomplishing great things alongside. They were the descendents of Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw. They could achieve as much as the founders themselves. They could achieve more.

They met at the edge of the forest the next day. Hermione was shouldering a bag that contained the shrunken contents of the books she had promised to the centaurs. Hermione gave Tom a tentative, half-hearted smile. Instead of returning it, he bent to give her a firm kiss, and brushed some stray curls from her face. Then he took her hand in his and they headed for the clearing. It was strange that they were both so comfortable in the forest; Hermione was nominally more familiar with its make-up than Tom due to her construction of the Defense Diagram. Most of the students didn't go near the forest, much less did they venture into it. At this point Hermione knew every variety of plant life around her as well as she knew the students of her Hogwarts. Tom, on the other hand, was prepared for every potential danger the forest offered. A light snow began to fall and coat the leaves as they entered the forest, but the forest itself was so thickly canopied that snow rarely fell to its ground. They wordlessly navigated a path towards the clearing, hand in hand.

Hermione set down her bag and started to remove and expand its contents. She did it wordlessly, as she did most of her magic. Tom had noticed that her magical habits erred on the side of caution. The staff usually vocalized their spells so that the students might learn, but Hermione guarded her magic, even now. Tom idly picked up a book titled "A Treatise on the Properties of Spatial Interrelations".

"It's a pity to lose these," he commented.

"Oh, it's nothing," she replied briskly. "I made copies of them all."

"Did you?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, some of them have to do with time travel, after all," said Hermione. She straightened, eying the book. "They'll never be able to get these back within the day. I wonder if I could work out some mode of conveyance?"

"Couldn't you just float them back to the village for them?"

"No, not with you with me. There's an entire ritual I needed to follow to even set foot into the village, and to be honest, I think they aren't happy with me any more."

"Why in the world not?"

"I don't know. I think they had a bad spot with a wizard a few centuries ago. They haven't trusted us since."

Tom made a dismissive sound, but Hermione looked thoughtful.

"They've about as much protection from us as Muggles. It's wise not to trust us."

Tom plucked a leaf from a nearby Mumblis Minbletonius. The tree made a nearly human mumbling sound. It sounded like if you listened carefully enough, you could make out the words. He placed it under a pile of the books and muttered an incantation. The leaf expanded, clothlike, and wrapped itself around the books. He repeated the process with another pile, then took a stray stick and transfigured it to bridge the two clusters, so that one might carry the two piles over one's shoulder.

Hermione looked at the apparatus approvingly. "That will do." She turned to her bag and began to finish the process with the rest of the contents. "You're staying over Christmas hols, right?"

"As always," Tom replied. "Although I don't think it will be as boring as years previous."

A smile came unbidden to Hermione's lips, and she rose again. "Oh? And why—"

Before she could complete her thought, a crashing sound came from the forest, and little Firenze suddenly appeared, breathless and panting. "Her—"

"What is it, Firenze?" she asked sharply, a sudden look of fear on her face.

"The others—time is changing—you need to _leave now_!"

Hermione narrowed her eyebrows and nodded. She turned to Tom, who already had her bag in his hand. She took a step, and suddenly there was a look of shock on her face, and from her lips came a soft "Oh!"

An arrow was sticking out of her chest, exactly where her heart would be. Hermione's hand raised helplessly towards it, and she fell, slowly, towards the ground, until Tom, white-faced, caught her.


	20. Chapter 20

All new reviewer type people this time around. Thank you Gibbler, Yasmin, meenajon, tigger84. Sorry it took a bit longer than usual to update, but that is the price of these nice long chapters. Hopefully you will finally understand the title of this story. We've got a bit more of a way to go, happily, and I do believe I may actually finish this thing. Here's to hoping.

.((0)).

The arrow quivered in Hermione's breast as she lay in Tom's arms, looking around wildly and gasping for breath. A scared, pained noise made its way out of her throat. It sounded like his name. Tom's head snapped back up towards the murmuring in the trees. He rose his wand "Avada Ked—"

"No," Hermione whispered. Tom returned his eyes to hers with an unspeakable look on his face. Another arrow whizzed by, grazing Tom's right arm.

Again, he rose his wand. "Scutio!" The blue shield included not only himself and Hermione, but also Firenze. Hermione, tears streaming from her eyes, reached into her robes for something. "What's going on?" Tom demanded.

"The stars, she—" Firenze got a hold over himself. "Time is changing. The stars are in different places. Events are happening differently than they were recorded in the books."

Hermione had pulled a knife from her robe. It clattered to the ground as her eyes gave one last wild look around and lost their focus. They did not close.

"No," said Tom, the sound strangled and worried. He took the knife and cut the arrow's quiver from it, and gently slid it out from underneath her. He could hear Firenze crying. "We are wizards," he said desperately. "She will not die." But she was already dying, perhaps already dead. It took so little time. He whispered the incantation under his breath, breathed it into her mouth in hopes of restoring her breath soon enough, his wand pointed to the place the arrow had been. He didn't notice that the shield was still in place. Soon, he did not notice anything as he lost himself in the spell, feeling every nuance and cadence of it deep in his soul, drawing every line that composed Mione's body and soul in his head. He could feel the currents of magic underneath him, those familiar currents that informed every part of Hogwarts. Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, but especially Ravenclaw's and Slytherin's. He drew those two currents into them, suffused the spell with the ghosts of magic already done, and then, finally, the spell was done. He didn't dare to look at Hermione. He rested his head over her chest, the wound now closed but her robes torn through where the arrow had gone. For the first time since he was a child, and it had been rare enough then, he nearly cried. He could feel tears prickling up into his eyes when he realized the chest he rested his head on was moving. She was alive. "Tell me again, little centaur," he said again. "Why did your people decide to kill her?"

The centaur's voice was weary. "Time is changing. They think it is to do with the girl, and that it bodes ill fortune."

"So you kill her. Tell me, little centaur. What if she was changing the future for the better?"

"I couldn't think but that she was," said Firenze, and Tom lifted his head to look at him. Firenze was staring at Hermione. "Is she—"

"Alive, no thanks to yours."

"There is a story," said Firenze. "It is one the wizards do not remember. Time changed once before this, in the time of the wizards who made your school. It was Slytherin that changed it, and after it, we could not roam outside of the magical forests. The last time it happened, our freedom was compromised."

"Perhaps it might have been restored, this time."

"That is what my mother said. Iado and Uru felt the same. But there were too many people who did not."

Tom looked down at Hermione, whose features were composed in a deep slumber. "I suppose this is the end of her dealings with the centaurs. Still, they might know they did not kill her. They might come after her again. And, if they remember her, and she wanders this forest as a child in the future… She may not live to come back to this time."

"What will you do?" asked Firenze, with a pale face.

"Don't worry, little centaur. I will not kill them. She would never permit it. But I can make them forget."

Firenze was looking down at Hermione. "What about me?"

Tom didn't answer for a long moment. "You tried to protect her once, little centaur. Will you do it again?"

Firenze nodded.

Tom raised his wand, then looked wonderingly at the blue shield that surrounded them. He frowned and broke the spell. "Strange," he murmured under his breath. He returned his wand to Firenze's temple. "Don't be afraid." Firenze looked afraid anyway, but then most sentient creatures did when you told them not to be, perhaps for good reason. "I just need to know that you speak the truth." He paused, and then: "Legilimens." He rifled through the contents of Firenze's head—here were chats with Uru, which Firenze needed no translation for; here was Dumbledore offering him a bit of candy (so he did carry on with the centaurs); here were endless things Firenze had peeked into or read about or looked at which he wasn't supposed to; there was nothing in his head that Mione need fear. It was as Tom expected, but he never relied on solely his instincts if he could.

Tom stood. "Watch over her?" he asked.

"Where are you going?"

"To settle things with the centaurs. They will come to no harm."

"How do I know?"

"Do you trust Mione?"

Firenze looked at Mione's sleeping face, and nodded.

"She trusts me." Tom couldn't help knowing that was a lie, but she couldn't possibly raise an objection to a village's worth of Obliviates, not when that village had conspired to murder her.

Firenze kneeled by Mione as Tom moved into the forest, following the trail the centaurs had left behind him, towards his village. The boy couldn't help feeling like a traitor, but there was nothing he could do. Magic always won out in the end—that was exactly the reason the centaurs avoided wizarding kind. Besides, he had heard the meetings between the girl and the elders, had heard both Iado and Uru speak of her, and he knew she intended nothing but good. He could only hope, after Tom had long since disappeared into the forest, that she would achieve it.

.((0)).

When they came for Bellonia Zabini, she was looking into the Pensieve at the face of that curly-haired witch whom Monsieur Knauss had seemed to think was so important. Far be it for her not to profit off of the findings that others were too dead to profit by. She was quite sure, since he had risked and met death in his endeavor, that this little girl may well turn out to be important. She had no reason to fear for telling the right people about this girl. Monsieur Knauss had not been killed for attempting to take her, after all; he'd been killed because he was a double (probably a triple) agent.

It was a foolish game to play in this country during these times. You couldn't trust anyone, after all. This was exactly why Bellonia herself did so well; she didn't trust anyone and was divinely untrustworthy. She was exactly the sort of person Grindelwald trusted. He did not like those who tried to insinuate themselves into his trust; he too, had none to give. Instead, he liked to have the measure of his players, so that he knew exactly how to use them in his lovely little quest to murder all those pathetic little muggles.

She was wondering exactly how to parlay this bit of information into a nicer position at the French Ministry when there came a knock on her doors (Louis XIV; the muggles were clever at art since after all there was so little else that they could do). Bellonia covered the Pensieve with a perfumed, rose-colored silk made for her in India expressly for the purpose of covering the Pensieve, and answered the door.

At the other side were two men she did not recognize and a tall, very pale girl who looked familiar but whom she could not place. "Perhaps you don't understand social niceties, what with your mode of dressing, but I must inform you it is quite rude for strangers to come calling without first making the proper introductions. Outside of the house, of course."

The pale girl stepped forward, and she did look very familiar. "Does my stepmother find me so strange?" she asked.

Bellonia cocked her head. Of course. She looked very much like her irritating mother, and she had been even more than irritating than her as a child. Bellonia told her so.

"I'm afraid I'm about to become more irritating still, stepmother. You see, it seems you have obstructed the flow of some information which might have been not a little important to Le Mouvement de Sang. What will be done with you is of little consequence to me, but I do believe you have something of mine." Alicia stepped, uninvited, into Bellonia's estate. She headed immediately towards the Pensieve. Bellonia started after her, but she felt the tip of one of the men's wand in her back. "I have come to retrieve it," she called lazily over her shoulder.

Bellonia made quite a fuss as she exited her estate. She raged at Alicia that she would pay her back twofold, but Alicia did not answer. She deliberately uncovered the Pensieve before Bellonia's enraged eyes as she was escorted outside of the doorframe. Alicia stood calmly within it, standing over the uncovered Pensieve. "Father, Mother, Monsieur Knauss," she whispered. "Death will have to wait until I have the means to leash it. For now, be satisfied with this. It may be a while, but be patient. For now, this may be even worse for her." Alicia began at once to see how the heirloom had changed since she had last seen it.

.((0)).

Hermione awoke to a pair of blue eyes staring worriedly at her. She looked around, confused by the forest for a moment, and then remembered herself. She felt quickly for the arrow, and wasn't surprised, since she felt no pain, to find that it was no longer there. In place of the arrow, however, was a strange hum of energy that seemed to stretch from her chest to the tips of her limbs. She felt more awake and alert than she remembered ever feeling. She turned to the youthful blue eyes. "Firenze," she said softly, propping herself up. Even her muscles seemed new.

"He fixed you," the young centaur whispered.

"Yes," said Hermione. Her mind felt funny, like it was trying to hear a voice just under range. She turned in the direction of Hogwarts, and felt some kind of energy running towards it. She put her hand on the cold ground and felt the ghost of a thread of warmth. Two. She closed her eyes. Two, the snake and the raven. She could feel them, Rowena and Slytherin, under the ground, the aftermath of their magic buried but undead, fading but still present. Hermione knew that Tom could feel the lines too, and was sure that he could feel what remained of Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff. "More than fixed," she whispered. "Where's Tom?"

"He went to the village," replied Firenze.

Hermione looked up sharply. No, he wouldn't kill them. He hadn't done so before, although he almost had. Firenze wouldn't be half as calm as he was if Tom had gone to do such a thing. Somehow, she was otherwise sure of it. In fact, she was sure that he had gone to obliviate the village. Well, that would explain why the centaurs hadn't recognized her in her fifth year, anyway. Hermione wasn't exactly sure how she felt about it, but she knew Tom was doing it to protect her, as well as to ensure they might still use the forest if necessary. It occurred to Hermione that she ought to confirm her suspicions. "Firenze, did he go to obliviate them?"

Firenze nodded. "To make them forget, he said."

"Why didn't he obliviate you?"

"He said he wanted me to protect you."

Hermione nodded. Funny, she had never even encountered Firenze during all her years at Hogwarts. He'd heard about him from Harry and the astronomy students, but had never even seen him.

"There's something funny about your eyes," said Firenze after a cautious moment.

She looked back up. "What about them?"

"They're… lighter. Almost gold."

Hermione picked up a stray brown leaf from the forest floor and transfigured it into looking glass. She gingerly held it up to her face. Her eyes had changed; they were now a sort of golden-brown, and there was almost a glowing quality to the color. "That will need a glamour when we return to Hogwarts," she muttered. She looked back up to Firenze. "What are you to do, Firenze? When you go back to your village?" She quickly transfigured the looking glass back into a leaf. When it changed, it was green instead of brown. She frowned at it.

"He didn't say. Your friend."

"Tom," Hermione supplied. "Well… what do you think you'll do?"

"I suppose I'll have to be very careful not to remind anyone of anything that's happened."

Hermione nodded. "I'm very sorry this happened, Firenze."

"I am too," the young centaur murmured.

"Do you know why they—" she couldn't bring herself to finish the question, but Firenze understood what she was asking well enough.

"They said that time was changing. The stars aren't moving according to their natural course—my mother isn't worried about this. She says there's no reason why they shouldn't move whichever way they choose to. Some things have happened later or earlier than they were supposed to, according to your books. And a magical child was born earlier than his biography dates."

Hermione had a curious sensation when she heard all this, almost like a sense of déjà vu. "I'll have to look at the books when Tom comes back with them." She shouldn't be sure that this was what Tom would do, but nevertheless, she was. "Perhaps you can help me look through them. Do you remember the specific events?"

"Yes, I eavesdropped on the trial."

"They had a trial for me?"

"Funny that you weren't there for it, eh, Mione?" Tom drawled from behind a patch of trees through which he was moving.

Hermione stood with her new muscles and strode towards him. "It seems I owe you my life," she told him.

"I never let a debt remain unpaid," he answered easily. He embraced her, and then took her shoulders, looking down into her face. "Your eyes," he whispered.

"Not just that," said Hermione. "Perhaps we should discuss it later." She looked over towards Firenze. "Firenze has been explaining things to me. Did you bring the books I've given to the centaurs?"

"Of course," murmured Tom, producing them from his robes. "I suppose we should repack those." He indicated the forgotten pile of books that Hermione had brought for the centaurs.

Hermione suppressed a brief flash of anger. It somehow made the entire thing a more bitter pill to swallow; she had been bringing them something and they had repaid her with an arrow. She sighed and waved her wand towards a stack, sending a silent shrinking spell towards them. The books disappeared entirely.

"Not just that," Tom murmured.

Hermione nodded and searched for the books in the frozen underbrush. "I'm not sure what it is. I feel strong, as well." She was sure the books had been here, so she pointed her wand and enlarged them, analyzing the spell in her head. It seemed her spells were coming out in a more extreme form, so she sent an amended enlargement spell towards the ground. Now the books were a manageable size. She floated them into her knapsack, lying near the remaining stacks. Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. If her magic was tending towards the extreme, she should be capable of more. She muttered a de-powered, multiple shrinking spell at the books and, at the last minute, decided to make it synchronous to a levitation charm. The spell worked beautifully: the books simultaneously shrank and floated into the air, inserting themselves neatly into her knapsack. She added to them the books Tom had retrieved. When she turned, she saw Firenze looking towards the display in unfiltered fascination and Tom giving her a pensive look.

"You seem to be adjusting rapidly."

"I've always been a quick learner," Hermione replied. She looked towards Firenze. "How did it go in the village?"

"Fine. No one was harmed. It was a bit funny obliviating Uru, though. I had to select the right bits and it had slightly different ramifications than Obliviate usually does. Some of the other centaurs required finesse as well."

"Will you be all right, Firenze?"

"Yes," replied the centaur, but he sounded uncertain.

Hermione walked over to him. "I owe you a great debt, Firenze, for warning me. Also, a friend of mine owes you one you're not aware of."

"Is it because it happens in the future?"

"Yes. I cannot tell you more, of course, but I'm grateful, and it would be gratifying to look into your village's claims together with you."

Firenze smiled at this, his innate curiosity unbridled.

"Perhaps in a few days."

"How will you call on me?"

"I'll send an owl," Hermione told him. "I'm afraid we must go, now."

"Of course." Firenze sent a wary look over to Tom. "Thank you for—fixing her."

Tom threw a last glance over his shoulder as he walked away with Hermione. "Thank you for protecting her."

Hermione brushed her hand against Tom's. "Protect me, hmm?"

Tom raised an eyebrow. "You're welcome." He grasped her hand firmly in his, which wasn't something he did very often, but his characteristic reserve had been somewhat displaced in the tumult of the morning. They walked in silence for a while, until Hermione realized Tom was guiding them away from Hogwarts.

"Are we going to the cave?" she asked.

"That we are."

This prompted another silence, and Hermione bit her lip and worried at it. Spying on Tom at the cave seemed a lifetime ago. Everything did. She looked down at their clasped hands, and could almost swear she saw a silvery color running between them. When she looked more closely at it, the color did not disappear. "Tom," she whispered.

He looked at her and followed her eyes down.

"Do you see it?"

He frowned, still looking. "I think… wait. It's the… energy from the spell, I think."

"What color is it?"

"Silver."

"Funny that we're the only two houses with a color in common." Funny that she didn't automatically think her house was Gryffindor. "I can't think it's a coincidence."

"When I performed the incantation this morning, I drew on the energy from Hogwarts. From Slytherin and Ravenclaw in particular."

"Yes, you can feel them can't you? The founders, in the veins of magic they left behind. It's in the ground, here, and courses towards the school." When Hermione looked up, the new gold in her eyes was positively crackling.

"Yes," Tom whispered.

"I can feel you, now. I knew what you went to the centaur's village to do." Her fingers brushed his cheek. "What it's like to go back to the orphanage, and the bombings, and sooty old London. No wonder you hate the Muggle world. It was never a comfort to you, as it was to me."

"Go on," he told her in a low voice.

"The anger. You enjoy your anger. It gives you your will, your power, your capacity." Her fingers were curled behind his ear, now, her burning eyes close. "Very little guilt, for you, about everything except me. For me it threatens to eat you from within, doesn't it? And I keep reminding you of it, don't I?"

Tom's lips quirked, slightly, at this.

"Oh, don't worry. I am exactly who you thought I was. Your refuge, your new life." Hermione blinked. What was she saying? Looking into Tom's eyes, she thought she didn't care, and the newness in her stirred.

Unblinking, Tom brushed his lips against hers, and they held each other's eyes until Hermione tilted her head and deepened the kiss, and a new sort of desire began to pulse into her from that place on her breast that had brought her death and rebirth. She brought his body closer with her hand against his back, provoking a sharp intake of breath, and she pulled his lower lip with her teeth, circling it with her tongue. With another hand, she grasped at his robes and partially uncloaked him, and he gave a soft, low chuckle at that. She kissed him again, urgently, and he responded in kind, letting his cloak fall to the ground. She grasped at his shirt next, unbuttoning it, and he started to undress her, and they hung back, suspended from each other for a moment as they watched the slow ritual peel the clothes from each other in the cold afternoon. It didn't seem cold. Tom kneeled on the pile of their clothes when they were done, and pulled Hermione down to him, and didn't let her kiss him. Instead he pressed his lips against her collar, her stomach, her hip, drew his lips in soft arches upwards until he reached that spot on her chest that the arrow had punctured. There was an unnatural warmth there, as he kissed it, and it spiked through his lips and he gasped. When he looked up, Hermione's eyes seemed made of pure gold, and sharp as the eyes of a raven. She pushed him down onto the cloaks so he was sitting and took her place on top of him, kissed him as he entered, was overcome and muffled a murmur against his neck. He cupped her head in his hand, catching a fistful of her hair, and tipped her over onto her back on their cloaks, and held her wrists against the ground as he moved against her. She bit her lip and then his, partially spiralled a leg around his, and neither of them were cold. He shuddered and let his breath draw ragged, and her eyes seemed to grow more and more golden as he went on, and he could not help staring at them as they changed, underscored by a rising pink, and when they crested against each other in a final collision he could clearly make out a scar over her heart that matched the gold in her eyes, shaped like a star.

The gold in her eyes dimmed as Hermione lay beside Tom, and the cold in the air started to creep slowly over their skin again. "Just think," she said. "Just think, we've managed to change time. It must mean we're successful. It must, mustn't it? If even the stars can be moved?"


	21. Chapter 21

Hey all. Sorry it took a bit, but I'm just trying to place all the remaining elements together as this story embarks on its final arc. It is a long arc, trust me. Heck, the next chapter is already longer than ten pages. As you may be able to guess from the end of this chapter, it is Rowena's story, and it will contain many of the answers Tom and Hermione have been searching for. So, not too heavy on the T/Hr, but I think it is the best chapter of this entire story. Thank you reviewers: lily1121, meenajon, and Tipry (impatience is a virtue). Please enjoy the chapter.

.((0)).

They had tried to reconstruct the golden bed from their shared dream in Tom's cave, hidden in a corner behind a ledge. They had been wildly successful. There was no need to peek into each other's mind for the memory of that short reprieve in the middle of Hermione's fight with a Voldemort-possessed Tom. Their own recollections matched exactly. It was large, but not so much so that it was alienating, had a solid gold skirt running its length, soft white undercovers, and quilted gold covers. There seemed to be a shifting pattern on the quilt, but when you looked closely at it, it was just the reflections of the light. There was a long, enormous pillow. Tom had even recreated the light from that dream, the overpowering gold light, which didn't quite hide the cave's dirt walls, but almost did. In a former life, Hermione had hidden in this nook when she had enough of Grawp's grabbiness.

She woke naked under the sheets, entangled in Tom's long limbs, her hand resting between a forward-thrust arm and his chest. He was slightly barrel-chested, so that he didn't seem as slim as the rest of him was built. She had found it made an excellent pillow, and her head was resting on it now. She could stay in this bed forever, she thought, running her hand to Tom's waist. It caused him to stir, and entangle her more tightly as he drowsed for a short time before waking. She breathed in the scent of his skin. Tom always smelled like soap, with a slight undercurrent of earth. She had a feeling he was an excessive bather, making up for what was in shortage at the orphanage. She was no longer torn, lying in his arms; the connection between him and Voldemort had been nearly severed, her doubts nearly evaporated. Time was changed, time itself, she had been killed and lived again thanks to him. For the first time in a long, long time, Hermione felt very sure about the future.

Tom was awake, and began to disentangle his limbs and slowly replace them with an entanglement of kisses. She returned them, twining herself into him so that they became a complicated braid, the kind that didn't need to be knotted at one end in order to prevent unraveling. They had become utterly comfortable with each other, and in tune to each other, so that their movements neared premeditation. Foreplay led to sex inevitably, and they lay in each others arms afterwards, still intertwined. If there hadn't been work to do, they might have stayed like that for the entire day.

There was work to do, especially if they wanted to preserve what they had. Hermione still didn't know where Harry was being kept, and she still didn't know how to bring an end to Voldemort's immortality. They were close, but they weren't there yet. So they left the cave and walked through the forest, hand in hand. Towards Hogwarts.

"Merlin," said Tom as they reached the Quidditch pitch. "I nearly forgot the prefect's meeting. I've already missed two due to you."

"Me?" Hermione asked innocently. "I believe you had as much to do with it as I did."

"Perhaps."

Just then, a rather ragged school owl swooped towards them, a letter in hand. It landed on Hermione's shoulder and extended it to her. She opened it as the owl pecked at her neck, insisting on a treat. "Ow, I haven't got any owl treats, you ruffian." She swatted impatiently at the owl and it flew off.

"What is it?" asked Tom.

"Dumbledore," Hermione murmured, as she looked over the contents of the letter. Her heart dropped at the letter's contents. "He wants to talk about the Time Machine." There was less and less time.

It occurred to Hermione, as she sat in Professor Dumbledore's empty office, that she had not spoken to him for weeks. The last time they had spoken had been after the Shrieking Shack incident. She expelled a shaky breath as she took into consideration his capacity for knowing much more than she ever suspected he did. Hermione had managed to keep her secrets from Tom, at least for a while, but she had managed to keep very few of them where Dumbledore was concerned. Still, she had managed to carry out her affairs with the centaurs without his knowledge, so hopefully he would not be able to pick out her affair with Tom out of thin air.

Dumbledore emerged from one of the doorways interior to his office and smiled at her. "Ms. Granger, you look well."

"Thank you, Professor."

"May I offer you a lemondrop?"

"No," said Hermione quickly, and she saw an honest look of disappointment pass the man's face. She nearly giggled, but that was nervousness, again. "Have there been any new developments, Professor?"

"Yes, yes, Miss Granger. Professor O'Bleeke and I have been working in close conjunction these past few weeks. I have finally worked out a solution to folding Tom back in time."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You remember the spell I told you about, the Are Dlog?"

"Yes. It ensures that the future will continue as it already has."

"Right. Yes. Well, you see, I had planned to apply it after you left for your future with Tom Riddle in tow. I have since changed my mind." He held up a Time Turner hung from a chain with his left hand. "You see, Tom would only have gone to the future due to your presence. If I myelf use this Time Turner to go back in time, to the point of your arrival, and apply the Are Dlog, your actions in this time period will be rendered null and void. Thus, Tom will have no reason to go forward in time. He already will have, but, in another sense, he will not. In this way, we can preserve what has already, to your eyes at least, already come to pass."

Hermione breathed out, unable to respond. Another Tom, left to have his soul taken by his own invention. How had he put it? Lord Voldemort would crawl into his mouth and eat his very soul. She had saved Tom from that fate, and now she would need to leave a version of him to that fate. She set her chin. Well, she would also leave thousands to their fates, including Harry's mother and father, certain members of Ron's family, and her own parents. No need for her to have moral qualms over one version of Tom, when she could at least still save the other.

"Miss Granger?"

"Yes, Professor. I'm sorry, I just—it's hard to believe it's actually happening."

"As my letter to myself indicated, it already did happen. My future self has already seen you disappear into the Time Machine with Tom Riddle."

"Yes. Is the construction to begin?"

"We still need to discover what fuels the machine. I would like you to spend your time during the holidays working with Professor O'Bleeke on this problem, as I have certain other obligations to attend to."

"Of course," said Hermione.

He clapped his hands together. "Very good, very good. Now, if you don't mind, I have a set of first year examinations that I have not yet attended."

Hermione rose immediately. "Yes, I suppose I should be getting to work as well."

"Miss Granger—"

"Yes?"

A degree of levity had left Dumbledore's eyes. "I am glad you took the higher road with Pendrake Malfoy."

Hermione managed to nod. Well, she must be capable of keeping secrets from Dumbledore, if he was unaware of how she had managed that. Or, perhaps he did know, and his remark was calculated to show her just how far her morals had descended since her advent into the Hogwarts of the 1940's. She made her leave as quickly as she could, wondering just how much of her old self she'd be able to recover when she returned to her own time.

.((0)).

"I'm telling you," seethed Bellonia Zabini. "I'm sure it's important! It has nothing to do with his status as a spy. He was honestly trying to procure something that was in one way important to the cause."

"We have told you," said X LeStrange. "We have no idea who this girl you speak of is. She purports to be a Potter; we have no such record of one existing. She purports to be a former Beauxbatons student. We have no such record of any student matching her description attending the school. She reports to have been at Alsace; we have found no evidence to support that claim."

"Can't you see, this lack of information tells you that she is important!"

"Yes, in some mysterious way which you do not know. I fail to see how this should pardon you of your crimes."

"What exactly are my crimes?"

"You foiled an attempt by an agent to achieve an end for the cause."

Bellonia sighed. "You are referring to the same attempt to which I am referring. I played no part in foiling it. Monsieur Knauss foiled it through his own incompetence. It was put to an end by Dumbledore, who informed Grindelwald himself that Knauss was working for him. I have done nothing wrong."

X leaned forward, his hands clasped together. He smiled. His eyes did not mean it. "It is more the principle of the thing, than the thing itself."

"There is no thing itself. Therefore there can be no principal of it," Bellonia sighed, now thoroughly exasperated.

X maintained his carefully arranged mask. "Frustrating, isn't it?"

"Thoroughly," Bellonia replied drily.

"You no longer have any control over your fate. The course of your life is held in the hands of others, and there is no evidence of them being even rational. Frustration, I think, is the least of your problems."

"You're doing this on purpose," said Bellonia. She sounded tired, and in truth she was, but she felt a new sort of strength stir in her at X's words. "Why?"

There was a beat. The expression on X's face did not waver. "You are known as the Black Widow, are you not?"

"I cannot take responsibility for a name I did not invent."

"Nevertheless, there is a reason for it, is there not? You take things which are not yours, and in the process, you ruin families. Pureblooded families. I am surprised (X Blood) has tolerated you for as long as it has."

So this was it. The same old prejudices resurfacing. "I am pureblooded, X. You would do well to remember that."

"Pureblooded, perhaps. In the plebian sense. What was your original name? Ulther, or something like that? Not a name I took the time to learn, that is for certain."

Bellonia sighed. "So this is how it's to be, then."

"It is."

"How tedious."

.((0)).

"Dear Pen,

I do hope you haven't forgotten your old friend. It has been so long since we last had a real conversation. I am currently in France, putting certain lingering things to right and to rest. I trust you have been well; I certainly have been. I was wondering if perhaps you would like to join Adrian when he meets me in Andorra La Vela during the winter holidays. I have sent a similar invitation to Jude and Jean. I believe there is much for all of us to discuss, and that being away from Hogwarts will have a rather liberating effect on possible conversation. Do come,

Your firm friend,

Alicia Silversmith."

Alicia stood in Gabriel's room, which was empty now that he was aware, doing his work for Le Sang. Snow was falling on Paris. Occupation, under Grindelwald and Hitler, had preserved the beauty of the city. Surrender and compromise prevented brutality. Alicia did not think she thought much of surrender and compromise. She knew what it was to be victim to upstart accumulations of power. The ancient families may have attained their wealth and power through awful means, but they had done so such a long time ago that now, they were largely benevolent.

Before the war; before Grindelwald, that had been the case. The Wizarding French Revolution had changed everything. The plebian families had united with the muddy-blooded magical folk and overthrown the French Ministry at around the same time that bloody Muggle trench war was going on. They had placed an incompetent mudblood in the position of Minister. It had been a revolution not without blood, and copious amounts of it. People without power had an insatiable appetite for it. Alicia's father, who had lost his brothers and sister to the Revolution, and his wife to its aftermath, had taught her this. In England the mudblood-lovers tended to look on the Wizarding French Revolution as something necessary and even good. They tended to forget the fact that thousands had died, and entire pureblooded families had been wiped out of existence. One of the reasons Alicia had a measure of respect for Professor Dumbledore was that he had been a vocal opponent of the Revolution. It was the Revolution which sparked the current strain of anti-mudblood and anti-plebe sentiment, and which had probably provoked Grindelwald's brutal rise to power. People did not like to admit this either, just as the Muggles did not like to admit that German Reparations had probably provoked Hitler's rise to power.

Bellonia Zabini had driven her father's old lesson into her head with a vengeance.

It was the people who endeavored to attain wealth and power they did not currently have who were vicious, amoral, and willing to do anything to achieve their ends. People like Bellonia Zabini. People, she now realized, like Tom Riddle.

She supposed she was the only one of their little group who had seen the changes in the boy with clear eyes. No one had really noticed Tom until fifth year; he was largely successful in flying under the radar. Alicia made a habit of noting people of potential, however. It was something her breeding had made an intuition in her. The ancient families maintained the balance of power through enlightened despotism, after all; it was a principle to which she had always adhered. She had watched him fall when Pendrake had put those silly notices up around Slytherin, and had not thought well of Pendrake for it; she was still a believer in benevolence. She had watched him persevere; that was when she'd realized how cold he was, how unmoved by everyone's hatred he was. She had watched his sudden and impossible reversal of fortune, and knew it to be entirely of his own making. She suspected he had done something to Pendrake, found some horrible piece of information with which to blackmail him.

And now he was with the Potter girl, who had been involved in the war, on the opposite side of her Uncle. Despite her ancient pureblood name, the girl was surely allied with the remnants of the revolutionary-minded faction, who had changed the face of France and absolutely ruined Beauxbatons. Who had provoked Grindelwald's brutal rise to power. If only people would simply content themselves with the balance of power. Certainly, plebian families and the mudbloods were not privileged, but so long as they accepted their position in the Wizarding world, wars such as the ongoing one could be prevented, and there would be no need of surrender and losses. Was privilege really worth people's lives? Revolutionaries never really understood the implications of the choices they made.

Alicia had decided that things had gone as they had for long enough. Tom had had his taste of power, and she knew it would not be enough; the powerless after all have voracious appetites. And the Potter girl was too strong of an ally; her importance to Uncle Knauss proved that. Alicia would not sit idly by while Tom forced others to sacrifice in order to content his thirst for power. She would prevent another Bellonia for coming to be in the first place; she did not ever want to face surrender and compromise again.

.((0)).

Tom was already in the Founders section of the library when Hermione arrived. He looked up from a book—one of Ravenclaw's, and smiled. "A glamour?" he inquired, and Hermione remembered she had spelled her eyes brown before going to Dumbledore's.

"I saw myself in a mirror. I hardly recognize myself anymore," she said.

He ruminated before responding. "People change, Mione. I certainly have. You shouldn't fear it. If you do, the important things may change without your knowing."

Hermione sat before the pile of Rowena's books that remained for her to read. "You just like me better with funny new eyes," she said.

"No," said Tom. "They indicate something, though. Your magical ability has become stronger; I think it has to do with how near death you were."

"I think it has to do with you reviving me," said Hermione. Then, under her breath, she murmured, "Even this place feels different."

"Do you feel them too?" asked Tom.

"The Founders," guessed Hermione. "I do. I can feel the remnants of their magic." She looked towards Slytherin's section; she had not touched one of his books; first she would read Rowena's. She had avoided his books due to long-formed notions, but now when she sensed the undercurrent of his magic, she felt something wild, and wicked. She'd known him to be dangerous on an intellectual level; now she could feel it. She saw it in Tom. Worse, something about it enticed her, where before she had been repelled.

Tom had gone back to his reading. There was work to do. Hermione took an alchemical text of Rowena's. When she lifted it, she could see a gap in the pages, as though some stray bits of parchment had been placed between the pages. She rifled through the pages and found that she was right. The parchment was crisp and silver; there was clearly a preservation enchantment on it. The writing was a dark shade of blue, elegant but spare.

It began: "I am the only daughter of Baba Yaga, fatherless and brought to life in the grinding of her mortar and pestle. I am books and speech and brains pounded together, combined by three unholy lights."

_The story repeats_, though Hermione, and continued to read.


	22. Chapter 22

Author's notes: Oh my god this took so freaking long to write. And I just finished, and I need to go to sleep, so I'm sorry reviewers, especially you new wonderous ones, but I just have to make a choice between responseless chapter or no chapter before sleep. I'll respond next time, I swear, or I'll go back and edit it, I'm sorry, please still review this one, it's an important chapter! Um, yeah. I present to you the chapter to end all chapters at 20 pages long. I would really like some feedback, considering how much work I put into this bit. Don't fret, there is a bit of Tom and Hermione at the end, and hopefully this will put it in a whole new light.

The Story Repeats

I am the only daughter of Baba Yaga, fatherless and brought to life in the grinding of her mortar and pestle. I am books and speech and brains pounded together, combined by three unholy lights. The red knight kissed me with the flaming lips of morning; the white knight kissed me with incandescent afternoon light; the black night left his dark imprint nightly on my newborn skin. Thrice godfathered, so fathered am I, from purest light to darkest night am I, and the passion in between. The forests where I grew up crawled, in and out in endless shifting boundaries. You can look at the cartographers' maps of the Black Forest from then, before even the folk tales of my mother were a dream. No two maps are the same, and none contain the infinite leafy darkness that was my childhood playground. The territory always changed. I know because I constantly tested their limits. I am not one to be hedged in by borders. I am one to go beyond them. I am one to seek borders out so that I may break them.

First, however, there was much to learn within them, and learning was the substance of my creation. Baba Yaga taught me the five true names of magic—every spell, every transfiguration, and every charm is a combination or shade of those names. Many knew words that made things happen, names of names of names, but few knew the first names, the real ones. In those days you would hide your name in order to protect yourself. So I became Eve, Cathubogdva, Morrigan, Rowena Ravenclaw, Morgan Le Fay. I chose my name to suit my purpose. I wandered the Black Forest by the light of the skulls my mother collected, the light thereof stripping everything down to its core truth. I knew the vegetation like I knew the bones in my hand; I sensed the drifts of untethered power and tethered it to myself; I knew of the ideal form of beauty and the thousand faces of the gruesome; I knew of numbers, of things in themselves, of the mind that mirrors itself; I knew the currents of the air and from whence they came, and they whispered to me that it was time to leave.

I left the forest for the ocean and the ocean for the sand. I left the low lands for the high lands and watched the sky kingdoms fall. I learned to find the edges of the fickle faeries' land, whose territory was more mutable and dangerous than that of the Black Forest, and whose land was capable of infinite delights, and infinitely more sights. I learned of great people, of small people who would do great things, and of people who knew great things. I put my false names into all of their ears. My fingers felt the pulse of humanity, and they could stop it or draw it at will. In those days, there was no distinction between magical and nonmagical people. You can tell from the stories they tell of those days; you can tell because the nonmagical people still have those stories. I had not acted yet. A thousand blows will do nothing to a diamond, but a well placed strike, at an angle just so, will cut you just the line you want.

I was still in my relative girlhood when Godric Gryffindor came to me with his notion of a school. At that point in time, only those born of magical families acquired a proper enough instruction of their powers. Many magical people were born who never knew of their powers, and still others endangered many with their uncontrolled magical impulses. Often those who sought a magical education without the backing of a powerful family came to harm, or fell in with some misguided political contingent. And some nonmagical people found magical objects they could use, or found friends who would do magic for them.

There were those who wandered into the land of Faery. Few could keep any sort of perspective in that place of pure, wild magic, where high beauty turned to horror in the flicker of an eyelash, and the best intentions turned black more often than people tried to go back. When Godric came to me, I was living there. It had much to offer in terms of learning, and in terms of acquiring power. I had been carefully exposing myself to the land's ways and imbibing its darkening resources for nearly a century, and was reluctant to leave. However, I could be of unparalleled use to Godric, and his offer was a chance for me to indebt him with no cost or risk to myself. I could always return to the faery realm. The school was an idle project, meant to be short.

He had gathered two others for his purpose. Helga Hufflepuff knew more of the land than even I did; she had been born of it directly, had grown like a plant at the field of all places, the crossroads where all lands meet. She understood everything that came of the land and all of the creatures it birthed. She was allied to the Centaurs, the Unicorns, the Giants, the Dragons and the Merpeople, the five great inhuman empires, all of whom were properly sentient in those days. It was she who had given Godric the territory for the school; it was the most protected land that she knew of, and it was bordered by a forest populated by those she had allied herself to. I was the only other they talked to; none deigned to speak to humans, but I was inhuman enough for them. It was the three of us, in the beginning, who built the foundations of the school. Salazar Slytherin had not come yet.

I had not ever heard of Salazar Slytherin, and this provoked my infinite curiosity. There was little that I did not know left in the common world, and I waited for him like I waited for a book yet to be written. Then one night passed, and when the morning came, we found the last foundation laid out underneath all of ours. Perhaps it was fitting, that he should come to us like this; that we should wake up one day and find him underneath. For he had a great love of the underneath, for the interstices in between things, for all the places no one looked. In a way, he was the opposite of me, one who sought and created things that weren't meant to be known. I, the knower, was inevitably tempted.

We agreed that we should instruct our first class so as to become the school's first instructors. There was Bertilak, Helga's favorite and who Salazar despised, the son of a knight from newly-formed Logres. There was Nimue, half child of the merpeople and a fairy, my prize among them, beautiful and deep. She had emerald bright hair, quick eyes, and a quicker mind. There was plain Hellawas, who did not often come up from Salazar's dungeons, and might have found more secrets than me. And then, of course, there came one day a brother and a sister. She was called Ganeida, he Ambrosia. He had been birthed by an incubus; the two had only a father in common. They shared the same black hair and hawk yellow eyes. Godric took them. Later, of course, the boy would come to be known as Merlin.

One day, as I walked in the Forest surrounding the school, I came upon Slytherin speaking to a centaur. As I turned a wind in the path and the leaves retreated from my view, I saw that he wore the black body of a horse underneath him. He saw me watching, and had not before, and was not pleased at what he saw. The centaur who he spoke with glared; of the five empires, the centaurs were the least inclined to speak with those who weren't their kind. Only Helga among us could call them down from the cities they'd carved from the mountains. Now it seemed Salazar could speak to them too; his taste for forbidden things had been exposed to me.

I simply took a different path that day, the one that led away from him. Already I knew that secrets lose their power the less secret they become, so I told no one of what I had seen. As usual, Salazar hid himself and Hellawas from the rest of us, while we three all taught our students in ensemble. The boy Ambrosia was unnaturally gifted. He did not have to try, or train, and indeed he rarely did. He was often absent from class, and could be found sitting on a high tree limb, dangling a foot whilst speaking to a Giant, sometimes playing a lyre or occasionally writing runes onto the air for them. He could fly with the support of air alone. In order to let his sister Ganeida fly with him, he enchanted, of all things, a woodsman's broom.

Ganeida and Nimue were bosom friends, and Nimue often took her underneath the waters of the lake to teach her the art of marine soothsaying and scrying. When Ganeida was of a more proper age she properly fell in love, with Bertilak, who had by now learned a thousand common ruses to keep him from common death, which he would use to great effect later in his fabled meeting with Sir Gawain. Ganeida learned them all. Godric, when he was not on one or another of his quests, took her for an apt pupil. I knew better. Ganeida lived for her brother, and passed every thing she learned to him. Nimue, too, saw this soon enough to keep the things she liked best to herself. I could also see that this provoked Ambrosia's curiosity, which was nearly as large as my own. The silly boy, greater and darker secrets lay beneath his feet, but Nimue was a rare beauty. She resisted his clumsy charms easily, but she was young and I could see a part of her was as curious as he.

Salazar and Hellawas came up from their dungeons to share dinner with us one night, the former observant, the latter sullen. I knew this portended something; Salazar was never present at anything unless it might behoove him. Gryffindor, too, had returned from the wars which were currently determining the borders of our lands; both sides had magic, although both were dominated by unmagical soldiers. Gryffindor regaled the table with their bravery; that the nonmagic did face those with greater power was forever a a thing of infinite beauty to Godric. He was speaking of Uther Pendragon, who had narrowly avoided killing curses, had persisted despite impeding and mind-dulling jinxes, and fought with a brutal vigor even then. Ambrosia's eyes were shining, and I could tell the tale would soon be a lyre-fixed song that he would ply the giants with.

"You speak well of a pawn," commented Salazar quietly.

"I assure you, he is no pawn," protested Godric.

"How many magicians did he kill?"

"He smote Frey, the wild faery, with just his sword, and scores of men besides."

"How many magicians did Frey smite?"

"Five, but still he died."

"If you did not gather every piece of him, he will be resurrected in Faery."

"We gathered all his pieces, and the blood-soaked earth beneath. It was Pendragon did it."

Salazar waved away the last remark, uninterested in the argument, too sure of his own secret principles to bother to make Godric see his sense. In that moment I caught his preoccupation with cold-blooded estimates of power, and wondered if his fascination with secrets was driven by power or if his estimation of power was driven by secrets. With a wary eye, Godric left off his tales and began to question Helga about her recent foray into the land of Faery. Faery was as unsuited to the common land as I was suited to it. However, just as a few humans and magical folk crossed its borders out of curiosity, a few of the fickle and wild inhabitants of that world came into the common lands, with often disastrous results. Godric wanted to treat the matter with diplomacy, and Helga, product of all lands, was a natural choice of ambassador. She did not succumb as easily as most to the rapid changes and turns of that wild land, and she wielded a stolid power that few dared cross; she could have stood against either Gryffindor or Slytherin. I, a fellow inhuman, was on roughly equal ground. Since I verged so close towards the amoral ways of Faery, I would have been a poor choice for negotiations, much as I would have loved the chance to return.

The sound of a brass cup and its contents falling to the floor broke the conversation. When I turned towards its direction, Salazar was already watching. He'd somehow known it was coming. Ambrosia's yellow eyes were the snapping yellow of a flame, empty and full at the same time, burning with a vision no one else could see. He seemed possessed, moved from the outside, and he rose a hand to point diagonally towards the ground outside of the castle.

Ganeida was not in the least discomfited. She brought his eyes to face hers and commanded him to tell her what he saw. He answered that, underneath the ground there were two dragons, fighting, and that they foretold a great battle that would effect all of the lands.

We rose as one, the founders and the first students of our school, to the grounds to the west of the school. Helga peeled the earth away as easily as the skin from a fruit, and indeed there was a cavern beneath it, which was not a part of Slytherin's domain. There were in fact two dragons fighting; they were not any kind I knew from the Inhuman Empire of the Dragons, and they did not evidence any of the wise sentience that characterized their kinds. Perhaps this too was a portent. They struggled with neither of them giving sway. One was red and gold; the other was green and silver. The former had the brute strength of a warrior; he would topple the green and silver one, but it would turn out to be a feint, and the latter would rise again, to attack another time. The fight lasted a half an hour before our eyes before the two dragons flickered like twin candles and disappeared.

I was standing next to Salazar, whose face had arranged itself into an inscrutable mask. "How uncommon," I noted. "Prophecies are one thing; material prophecies are quite another."

He turned to me. "You've noticed it too. The source was the boy. I do not think the others know."

"Like as not he'll have something to do with this war he fortells."

"And the two combatants?" he asked.

I looked at Salazar, and Godric beyond him. I had my ideas and he might have had his own. I have never, however, given anyone what they want for free. Instead of replying, I gave him a small smile and withdrew to my quarters. I could see the rough path trod by two feet; it had not yet become a clearly marked road, but it diverged at a point and I knew the choice of direction would be of vital importance to the ambiguous goals I sought. I could not wait forever to act, learning in its stead. Still, there was a while yet and I had to make my choices clear.

It being winter, the pagan resurrection festival called for a brief cessation of schooling. I watched a brief play act in a nonmagic village, the hobby horse and the female man leading a parade towards a crowned fool, who pretended to die with a sword in his armpit and, after a brief moment, lived again. They burned oak and hung holly. I knew the ceremony to be vital to Helga, to tie all the meanings of the land which her power drew from together. In her ceremony, the sick she gathered did die, in the throes of her strange holiday medicine, made of holly and oak, and were reborn in perfect health.

I took the moment to make a foray back to the faeries' land. Once I entered it I did not wish to go back. Every step brought me something new, a color I had not seen, an equation I had imagined impossible, some unclassifiable creature. I was summoned at once by the Faery King to attend his court. I quickly assented. The court of the Faery King was nothing like that of the common courts which sought to imitate that original one. It was, like all things in Faery, a shifting, flickering place. Allegiances were settled and broken within the same minute, and the balance of power was forever unbalanced, the hierarchy rising and falling like tides around the fixed power of the King, who, perhaps because he was the new ruler at court, perhaps because he so rarely showed himself, was unknown to all but a few.

The palace could only be found by following the evening star until it turned into the morning star. In this place, the difference between the two was no fallacy, although I knew it to be so in the common land. I, godfathered by morning and evening themselves, bade the star change with a blink and arrived shortly at the castle. One moment it was made of silver and at another moment of emerald; it seemed to be made of towering spires at one moment and at another of battlements and turrets. I entered the palace with a smile, and that school I had come from seemed like a mote of dust in the eye of magic itself. I entered a room of changeling decadence. Before my eyes, the courtesans' dresses changed from flowers to jewels to butterflies; I saw men's hair grow before my eyes, shifting with them into womanhood, while certain of the women became men. It was not only your costume which changed here, but your features and essence.

I wore a simple sheath of light. It changed from the red of morning, to the white of afternoon, to the black of night, and my hair, hung low down my back, changed with it. My features remained steadfast, and here it was not only unusual, but a display of power. The King was so far invisible, as he was at so many of his court celebrations. It was said he took them as opportunities to observe the inhabitants of his land, to ponder how he might rule them. I circuited the room, myself more observant than participant, as ever. Towards my left a couple, kissing, merged into one. I passed a fratricide afterwards. Death was as impermanent as it was inevitable here; resurrection was always a possibility. I began to spiral closer towards the middle, compelled by some strange force; a force it was, however, and my curiosity allowed it to draw me in. I twirled on the arm of a blue-haired man for a moment; he wished to detain me for recreation, but I was driven ever closer towards the center. People were whispering now. The King had appeared. And I, in my circuit, drew towards him at what I knew to be his provocation. The shifting grew wilder now; people did not maintain shape for more than a moment or two. There was a sudden, brief surge of some horrid, strange energy, and for a moment I saw myself in another life, still at Hogwarts, by a river in the forest, washing out a cup. Perhaps it was yet to come; the vision made me dizzy. I shut my eyes and when they opened, there was a tall, black figure before me, wearing a high, dark crown. I could feel my dress and my hair shifting, as one, towards night. The King turned to me.

"Salazar," I whispered, and he caught me by the wrist.

"Yes," he whispered back, a wicked smile under his dark eyes. "Dance with me." I let him catch my back with his arm and pull me towards him; my free hand fell to his shoulder. I had never in my life been in the least bit surprised; I knew far too much for that. Here was the power of a secret: it wholly unseated me. I could hardly stand, and let Salazar Slytherin, King of Faery, hold my form up and swallow me with his eyes. After a moment, he pressed his cool cheek to mine and whispered into my ear. "Thrice met, Rowena. You know the power of this number, three. I have seen you looking towards me, hoping to open up my secrets as if I were a common lid. Do you still wish to know some of them?"

He was offering a sacrifice, but no sacrifice comes without a price. He withdrew to watch me, smiling. He knew I, being the creature I was, could not refuse. "Yes," I breathed.

Slytherin whirled me in a private spiral in the center of the room. "Very well. A hundred years ago or more, I was the son of a peasant in a common town on the cliffs of Dover. Magic was nothing but a story I sometimes heard on my grandmother's lap. Then, one night, I was exchanged for a changeling, and was adopted into the fair land. A common occurrence, no?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"It was the Queen who took me. She rose me as her own child; I was more of a favorite than her eldest. You can imagine how quickly I forgot the common life, and loved my new one as no faery person could. You know the love I speak of, don't you, Rowena, who bided here so long?"

"I do," I admitted.

"For half a century I was content, but I wanted what my mother had, to be the center around which the world I so loved revolved. A natural desire, no?"

"What did you do?"

"Oh," he breathed, his wicked smile wickeder. "I killed her and ate her. Clever of me, wasn't it?"

"And everything she was, all the bits you wanted, were resurrected inside of you."

He passed a hand through my hair, a fond look in his eyes. "You are quite clever too, aren't you?" These displays, these smiles and emotions where none had been before, discomfited me quite as much as his original appearance did. The power of a secret: I was under thrall. His face passed nearer mine. "Be my Queen, Rowena. Help me make the outside like the inside. Bring wonder to the world with me, so that nothing common may ever be seen again." His eyes had long since swallowed me, and within a moment his lips drew my breath into him. Night for night we were, and exchanged the stars between us. He had his answer. He had me. He told me to come with him and in a crack of sound we were suddenly in his room, a room outfitted by the night, with hidden things for furniture and vast dark spaces for walls. That night I knew pleasure beyond my ken, and it was not without a price, but for all these unknown things the King of Faery brought me I would and did pay any dear price without thought.

I was fixed in appearance, that night: my hair and eyes remained dark as the night, my skin morning bright, and my lips red as the sun seen on the horizon through clouds. When I returned to Hogwarts, the change was noticed, noted, questioned, and though it was connected to my journey to the faery land, it was not connected to Slytherin. I was the first person whom Godric began to distrust. I realized, as soon as I saw it, that Salazar had planted the seed in me so that Godric would cease to look his way, for a time. For a long enough time.

To me it did not matter that I had been made use of. I was under the spell of Salazar's dream, of the complete and utter cessation of normality, to the opening up of the entire world to the infinite possibilities of the faery land. I drifted through my days, passing over so many things I already knew, with so little opportunity to learn. I saw Nimue and Ambrosia out of the corner of my eye, beginning to play at love, saw Godric retreat to his wars and return from them, watched Helga slowly accrete her growing reserves of power. I lived for the night, when I descended, for the unending black that surrounded Salazar and I as new things unfolded between us, blossomed and dropped into the dark spaces, star after star after star. One night, as I left, I saw Hellewas, and had I any greater estimation of her I might have attempted to erase her memory, but I knew her to be just a pathetic, love-sick girl whose glimpse of me was hard-won. I was right in my estimation, but did not realize what might come to pass. I had become careless.

Soon enough and yet not soon enough, Nimue had been made suitable as an instructor. She gained a name, Viviene, to mask her former tutelage. She tired of Ambrosia, which broke his heart and caused him to retreat, to Godric's great disappointment. Godric's attention to Ganeida waned, and she in turn withdrew her attention from the earth that was Helga's domain, and the vast, cool waters of Vivienne, to the sky. It was the one subject that still connected her to her beloved brother. Of all the things in the common world, the night sky still held some interest to me, and I was able to give her some little instruction, and guide her attentions to the sky's rarest attributes and most potent mysteries. Another year passed, and then Launcelot arrived, and with him, the first division.

Nimue, now Viviene, brought him up from the surface of the lake as a child, and said that she had found him stranded by a spring in Benoic, called to it by his cries. He was a human child, devoid of all magic, and yet Viviene insisted he remain at Hogwarts. A scrying she had performed indicated that he was vital to them in future matters. No one protested this at all, except, of course, for Salazar. He was tactful enough to pursue his argument with Godric behind closed doors, where for many nights there persisted intense conversations which interrupted our near nightly idylls. I had not yet understood what Salazar's method for bringing about his new world was. These early tidings were the subtlest of hints.

"You were common once yourself," I pointed out to him when the conversations failed. "Could you not bring the child to Faery and brace him with magic so that he may more properly abide here?"

"That is not an option," he insisted, seething. I knew at once why it was not, at least not to this boy who had swallowed up his mother in his boundless ambition. I may have loved the faery realms, but I had been born to power and felt no need to utterly yoke it to me in the manner of Salazar. Only a boy who understood the vast contrast between the near-animal common life and the chaotic magic of Faery could be so driven to completely expunge himself and all else of normalcy. Only such a one could feel the fear of the once-powerless, and the ensuing thirst for ever more ultimate power. Any other who gained power as he had, was a threat to him. Salazar saw that I understood him; he always saw it when I learned something new. He kissed me and murmured to me about my cleverness, and it occurred to me that he thought himself more powerful than me, but only just. He kept me by his side for my use as an instrument and for my danger as a threat. It pleased me that he was more powerful; it meant that I still had things I could learn from him.

There is a well-known argument about the natural laws of the common world. There is no good reason for natural phenomenon to again and again manifest itself in the same manner, for the sun to rise as it does, with no alteration in its course, for a crystal lattice to be made in ice, for an object to fall instead of rise. Yet, for as long as the common world has existed, this state of things had persisted. Perhaps the common world was a counterpoint to the faery realm, where change itself was the rule. In any case, I had always had an interest in the argument, especially now that Salazar wished to remove this state of being entirely. I was discussing it with Ganeida one day when she told me that it was an argument of particular interest to the centaurs.

"How is it you know the musings of the centaur philosophers?" I asked her. "Ambrosia himself was never allowed in their company, even after Hufflepuff attempted to persuade them."

Ganeida's eyes softened at this mention of her brother, but she answered quickly. "Oh, Slytherin taught Hellawas the trick of shapeshifting. She's been carrying on with the centaurs, and discussing their scrying of the stars with me. I believe Slytherin did the same; she told me he'd given them a gift, unlikely as it seems."

Ganeida had always been too generous with what she learned. Still, it was bound to be to my advantage. At that time, Ambrosia was creating Stonehenge as a distant gift to his sister. It was an instrument from which to glean information about the stars, their comings and goings and what they bode. Once it was built, she would often sojourn there, as often to meet her brother, now called Merlin, as to pursue her solitary studies. Viviene had placed longevity spells on Launcelot, and also gave him a ring to protect him against magic. This was for the most part to protect him from Salazar. Seeing no reason not to, she began to undertake his instruction. The boy was kept away from the eyes of Salazar, which was easy enough as the man spent all of his time in the dungeons, making certain amendments to his domain. The work dwindled our nights together, and I went to Stonehenge with Ganeida, to pursue an infinity of observations. It was at this time that Merlin began to involve himself in the affairs of Uther Pendragon's son, no doubt prompted by the fond stories Gryffindor had furnished him with. He and Gryffindor began to communicate again, and speak of certain of Vivienne's tidings.

When I returned I bode my time in the Forest, seeking Helga's company. I knew I might be depended upon to be her equal and learned what I could of the power she was acquiring. She, unlike Gryffindor, had not wavered in her trust of me. Her power was too solid and her ethics too sound. Healing was naturally within her domain, and she sought to remedy the world. It was upon one of our forays that we came across Hellawas bathing in a tree-enclosed spring. It was plain she was pregnant, and plain enough she wished no one to know. She shifted her shape so quickly that Helga did not notice. She saw, however, that I did.

That night I went to Salazar despite his work. I inquired when he last had seen me, and he answered that he had the night before. I bode him to bring Hellawas to the room. She came, her chin thrust out, eyes sullen but determined. "Twas not me you saw," I told Salazar, and revealed her pregnant form to him.

He clapped his hands together and laughed. "My clever girls! Oh, you actually tricked me, Hellawas. Certainly your greatest accomplishment to date. And I'm sure my lovely Rowena put it all together practically out of thin air." Hellawas gave me a fierce stare, knowing this was not the reaction I had expected. However, it was clear enough she understood nothing of Salazar, and less of me.

"It was not only Slytherin you tricked, insolent girl. I, however, am not charmed. You think you know of me, but you only know what I have revealed under the name of Ravenclaw. I have many other names, three godfathers, and a mother who'd as soon flay you as look at you. You have two choices before you: you can face me for transgressions, for which you will certainly lose your child, or you can leave, and have it as the only keepsake of your unrequited love for Slytherin."

She turned to Slytherin for support, but he was entertained by the prospect of my wrath. Having no choice, she left to bear her child. I cursed her to carry the child for fifteen years before birth, so that she knew the full measure of crossing me.

Slytherin fixed me with a cold stare after she left. "I cannot permit you jealousy, howsoever charmingly you display it. I am King of Faery, and you may be Queen, but I shall do as I will with whomsoever I choose."

I looked impassively back at him. "You certainly may, Salazar, but Hellawas may not." And I withdrew, to ponder what secrets may have dropped that night and others, which would never now fall to me.

They say it was I, as Morgana, who gave birth to Mordred. However, the son of Uther Pendragon was no brother of mine, and Mordred was not my son. He was the product of Hellewas and Slytherin, and a cursed gestation of my making.

Soon afterwards Slytherin sent me back to Faery to keep his affairs there in order. Vivienne took my place as instructor. As I crossed the borderlands, the fickle ways of the fair land worked their first change in me. My nighttime hair became the red of the morning sun; Slytherin's night now claimed only my eyes, and my mouth remembered our passion. I returned to the faery land as its Queen. As such, I was in a position to learn more than ever. Already I had learned the hundreds of secrets of hundreds of nights with Salazar. Now I was there, I decided I might learn of the secrets of the morning, of dew-speckled things red with birth blood and not quite in bloom.

As a ruler, this was a prudent choice. I learned to see a rebellion before it unfolded, dissatisfaction before it boiled over. And here, in the place of all changes, I learned to see what change was coming. I do not know how long I dwelt in faery, because I became a thing of all perspective. I saw in 360 directions and a hundred steps into the future. In faery, I could control my subjects with the flicker of an eyelash. Destruction began to wane from the land. Wayward travelers did not become monstrosities of what they had been. Beauty and ugliness still lived by each other's side, but equally. Gradually, my subjects began to realize that in this land, they did not need resurrection to keep death away. Fratricide, patricide, and matricide whispered now instead of shouting. I never again punished as I had punished Hellawas. It was the wisdom of morning that taught me harsh punishments bear bitter fruits. It was all to the good of my rule that the Faery land became as it was. There came to it a Golden Age, not one that flickered in a day, but one which lasted a decade, or at least what a decade seemed in that perhaps land.

It was during this time that Titania and Oberon were my face at court. I sometimes went to the masquerades to see them, the most beautiful in a land of wild beauty. The time of night was fading from faery. There were no more murders at the balls, although there was still wickedness, and change still ruled the day. By this time my eyes, too, were red: morning and afternoon ruled my features. At one of the festivals, when the spirit of resurrection began to stir the air again, Helga Hufflepuff appeared.

I had been gone for a long time. Two decades had passed since I had last seen my lover, or my pupils. Slytherin had gone from Hogwarts five years ago; a rift had opened between him and the others as children of non-magical origins continued to be permitted on the grounds. A year ago, he had begun to work towards achieving his vision, apparently with the help of Hellawas. It occurred to me that he had gone after their child was born. A war unlike any other was brewing in the common land. A black death of Slytherin's making was sweeping the land; only magical people were immune. Continental tribes were closing in on the Isle of Albion, slaughtering the common folk; Slytherin thought nothing of employing common tribes to achieve his ends. He turned the common folk against each other, patiently feeding one into the mouth of the other in his quest to extinguish their kind from the earth.

In Albion, Uther Pendragon's son had pulled Gryffindor's sword from a stone and become a young king. Both Merlin and Gryffindor served as his advisors; Merlin closely and Gryffindor from a distance. Hogwarts remained a bastion, although it had not yet needed to be called into action. Vivienne was still in the process of educating Launcelot; it was still a school, and not yet the sanctuary that others would call Avalon.

I listened to Hufflepuff's tale and asked her what she expected of me. My side was clear. Though I had brought light into Faery, darkness still had its place. It was the whole of Slytherin's heart and his best tool to remake the common land.

"Do you know he cannot be killed?" Helga asked. "It is not that he has been resurrected. He is… immortal."

"You know this because you attempted to kill him," I deduced.

"Does it not intrigue you, that your ally has achieved immortality? Of all the things magically possible, this is yet unheard of. Is your curiosity not provoked by this secret?"

I regarded Helga. Her ability was so unassuming, yet so vast. I knew she was not asking me to find the answer for her, but tempting me to find them for myself. Tempting me to free myself from my bonds. I was right. She gave me the seed of a flower, an Aperio, made of black and white petals. If I were to fertilize it with Salazar's seed, I might gain all his secrets. Having provided me with the means to gain everything which still held me under Salazar's spell, she took her leave. She knew I would not hesitate to gain knowledge, whatever it was, at whatever price. I sent a servant to find Salazar, to tell him that Hufflepuff had sought me out and told me tidings from the common land. To tell him I had means with which to help. But I never gave anyone anything they wanted without a price. Salazar knew this, and returned to Faery within the month.

I had not been inside his night-made room for twenty years and more. In that black room, I noticed not the stars, but the vast emptiness between them. Now that I had learned every star's name, I realized that as many as they were, they were not infinite. Slytherin, seeing his changed kingdom, had his own realizations, and when we drew apart in his room, the space between us solidified into permanence. He found that his subjects would not obey him, hardly knew him, and barely remembered him. He bade me back to the common lands, and I withdrew, knowing it to be a banishment with the threat of death. Besides, I could always go back.

I had his seed, and I fertilized the Aperio with it. There was not much left I did not know. Instead, the knowledge the flower gave me was that many of my suspicions were right. Slytherin was deeply involved in a mad attempt to kill every single common human being with every means possible to him. I had suspected the allegiances he had made with each of the five inhuman empires. Only the Unicorns outright denied his proposals; Hufflepuff had restrained the Merpeople and the Centaurs. If not for Hufflepuff, the Black Death would surely have done most of his work for him. Now he was instigating wars planet-wide, it was only his lack of focus which allowed Albion to oppose him as successfully as it did. His greatest weakness was the common folk. It seemed beyond Slytherin's comprehension that the non-magic might prove vital in toppling his strategy. I could see the poppy-red death bloom he was forcing into blossom; only now did I see it spelled the end not just for the common world, but the faery land as well.

There were more important things. I knew now that he had not eaten his mother whole. He had saved a bit of her, her blood. I knew he had recently slain Uther Pendragon, and had saved a bit of his blood. I knew his son had been born, and that he had slain Hellawas soon after, very recently. The blood of a parent; the blood of an enemy; the blood of a friend. Their blood was mixed together in an ancient cup forged when Faery was born: the Grail. This was the secret to Salazar's immortality. He had mixed the blood of those three figures he killed in this ancient cup, and thereby forged a magic unheard of: immortality without resurrection. It was new, and it had been come by just in time.Then, he had hidden the Grail. Only the purest of hearts could call it back into any world, so that it was now even lost to Slytherin, and thus, cleverly hidden.

Nothing tied me to Slytherin, now.

I returned to Hogwarts with my news to discover that it was under siege. Both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had gone away on business related to Slytherin, and now he had taken advantage of their absence to rally his forces at the school. I found Ganeida, Vivienne, Bertilak, Launcelot, and even Merlin, defending it. They had evacuated their students.

They say a diamond will often withstand heavy blows from the wrong angle, but can be broken along a precise line with only a tap. My new, morning knowledge saw the way to crack through Salazar's forces. I did not hesitate. He had gathered mostly magical folk, wizards and warlocks of the common land, as well as a few of the faery folk, although not as much as he might have. Launcelot, protected by his ring, was singing his sword steadily through the crowd. The rest fought through magical means and were not as effective as this newly-made man with his simple death-stroke. I knew every fighter, every one of their powers, their strengths and weaknesses. Within the minute I had fought the battle in my head a thousand ways, myself the victor in each scenario. I approached where Launcelot did not, letting him take care of the nonmagic folk with his prodigious talent. I sent out a cloud of ravens to intercept the brunt of the curses flying towards us; I leveled the common magical folk severally and permanently. I stabilized the magic of the faery folk by reconfiguring the magical field. They were used to working only on chaotic impulse, and had little idea of what to do with their powers balanced and lawful. The others made short work of them. Nearly everyone had fallen. Then, Salazar alone remained.

We faced each other on this battlefield of his making, on the grounds we had once shared and made love within. We had never been so far apart. His face was the purest dark of bottomless rage. "First you destroy my kingdom, and now you choose to side against me?" he seethed.

"You have nothing left for me, Salazar," I replied. "You know me for what I am."

"I am stronger than you."

"You were, once," I agreed. "However, power is a fickler thing than anything in the faery land. I am made from and a vessel of knowledge. When you ceased to have secrets from me, you lost all hold over me."

He turned, black hair tumbling over his black eyes, looking for all the world like my Godfather the Evening, unseated from the tireless horse which brought darkness across the world each night. "Then I shall have more secrets from you, Rowena Ravenclaw, daughter of Baba Yaga, and find all those you keep from me."

That he knew my mother spoke of how great his power had indeed become. Still, he could not make a secret more important than the Grail, and I watched him retreat into the forest, shifting as he did in turn, into a centaur, growing a dragon's wings and a siren's tail, lengthening to a Giant's height. I knew he had the allegiance of four of the five Inhuman Empires, and that there was not world enough or time to find the Grail before he devastated the world with their combined wrath.

I was welcomed back to Hogwarts for my defense of it and for the news I had of the Grail. After my long duration in the fair lands and my recently altered appearance, I became Morgana La Fay. After hearing that the Grail could only be uncovered by the purest of hearts, Merlin departed to his young King Arthur, believing him to be capable of finding it. I knew there was no heart of earth capable of it, however. A heart like that needed cultivation, and there was no time to cultivate it. Helga returned soon after and was happy enough to see that the seed she had planted had bloomed in me. I was vital to this side's success, I knew.

I had studied practically all time and space had given me to study, but I had not yet made a study of time itself. This seemed the proper cue for it. Vivienne and Ganeida joined me in my studies; surprisingly, so did Launcelot. The boy, now a man, had grown up in a wholly magical environment while having no magic himself. He had made up for this with his learning, which now exceeded even Vivienne's. It was not hurt by an unlikely brilliance, so strong and so natural that he kept it to himself, and to such a degree that even his teachers did not know its depths. His lack of magical ability helped his knowledge as well, since magical people felt no need to keep secrets from him. He was charming and on terms with every person in the castle, and I had no doubt this had developed due to his natural curiosity. His lack of pretence, the secrecy of his razor-sharp brilliance, provoked confidences that would otherwise have remained hidden. Since he had surpassed Vivienne even in knowledge, I became his new teacher. I felt he would be the most likely to help me find a way to conquer time and bend it to my will. If I could achieve it, I knew it would be worth far more than the kind of time Salazar had gained in his immortality.

We began with numbers. The world did not suspect much of numbers, then, because it had made the grave mistake of assuming nature made them. Numbers corresponded to nature, but nature, at least nature in the common land, did not correspond to the vast possibilities of the numbers that lay as yet undreamed of in man's head. I taught Launcelot of the numbers that corresponded to nature: the naturals, certain irrationals, the limitations of certain of Euclid's axioms. Between us, we dreamed the rest. This was the beginning of Arithmancy. Having walked into a world of numbers which nature could not mimic, we bound nature to it by force, and forced change. Arithmancy is the underpinning of all modern, lawful magic, whereby small things can be made large, mass can be made weightless, matter be made into another matter, and gravity be made to stop.

Numbers were Launcelot's strength. It was in the very way he fought, clean and efficient in its geometery, the angles divined not by calculation but by instinct. It was in the way he thought, every sentence made up of atoms into logical sequences. It was in the way he loved, the way two parallel lines, if given world enough and time, will meet.

I was there when he first saw Guinevere. It is true that no one in the common land matched that girl for beauty, and she was a girl at the time. It wasn't that her hair was a glowing shade of gold, or that her eyes were a pale shade of blue ringed at the edges with a thin strata of stormclouds. It was her presence within this body. I had never seen such an absence of guile, such a bursting of life, such joy. She had wandered, somehow, into the outer boundaries of the grounds. I wondered ever after if she had something peculiarly magical to her—perhaps a tiny grain around which her spirit formed like a pearl. She could never perform a spell, as Launcelot never could, but I didn't ever discover how she came to that place, or why, even after Launcelot spoke with her. He told me that she had simply been wandering. It was her favorite pastime. He led her back to the common land and returned stricken with love. I wanted him to have her as much as he wanted her himself. I began a new education for him, that other part of the morning, the passion that is newly born. I cultivated the passion within him, stoked it, taught him how to provoke it.

It was not long after that, that we turned time. At least, we did so theoretically. We had to harness the theory to a physical body in order to physically reverse time. Time is coupled with Space in a way which even magic cannot undo, so to change the one, you must change the other. We worked the year on it. Bertilak left, to do Helga's bidding as the Green Knight. The Round Table was formed, to look for the Grail. Arthur made a political marriage, to young Guinevere. Slytherin raised Mordred in secret, his dark present for the world he was creating. I had my own secret, which uncleaved from me three months before our project's completion. Launcelot never knew he had a son, whom I called Galahad. No one could know of him. He was the key to the successful retrieval of the Grail. Once Launcelot had done all he could, he went out into the world to do his part helping in the search for the Grail. I knew it was not the only thing he searched for. And, when it was done, and the Time Turner completed, I left Hogwarts, now Avalon, again, with Galahad, and slipped backwards into time.

It was not a thing without repercussion. The natural world was altered, and left its mark in the stars. Still, they foretold a different future now, and this one was not so dark and full of destruction. Certain things remained. Norse tales tell and tell again of a war doomed to be lost to its heroes, which they must nevertheless fight. I was elsewhere now, still black-haired and black-eyed, a vestige of my ignorance. In this earlier world, I cleansed myself of everything: good and bad, and all of its knowledge. I grew pale as I dwindled, and closer to the truth. My hair, my skin, and even my eyes were white. Now, I was Elaine.

I raised Galahad in a white place, in perfect purity and perfect truth. He knew not of the world, but of the numbers which corresponded to it. He knew no magic, and was raised as though he possessed none. He grew perfectly formed in spirit and in mind, utterly balanced and utterly incapable of being imbalanced. He learned of nothing but perfect truth and perfect goodness and perfect purity. I was consumed by the same, the white flame of a star, of the fully risen sun. Our home was a windless asylum of the soul, untouched by provocation or temptation. There I learned of the endless complications of the line dividing right and wrong. There, I learned to be good. Galahad grew for eighteen years. When I bid him leave his home, it was a few years after I had gone back through time. Nothing had changed, except for the stars. Few marked their change, Slytherin among them.

Although he had learned nothing of weaponry, his first encounter bade him use it. He knew of the Grail, and of the Arthurian court's search for it. None could approach the court without proving their worth in blades first, however. Ironically, the man chosen to test him was his own unknown father, Launcelot. They approached each other on horseback; Galahad's was a unicorn he had befriended some years earlier. In their first collision, Galahad unseated Launcelot. Galahad descended from his horse to fight Launcelot on equal terms. He then broke Launcelot's sword, and threw his own to the ground to again fight equally. Next, they fought without weapons, and Galahad again bested Launcelot. Having never been taught a thing about violence, he bested his first opponent in innocence and with justice.

He was then invited to King Arthur's court at Launcelot's request. By this time, Launcelot had become King Arthur's most important advisor, and the human leader of the search for the Grail. As a reward, King Arthur turned a blind eye to Launcelot's affair with Guinevere; his marriage to her had been a political one, after all. Helga and Godric led the magical counterpart of the search. Merlin worked more closely with the nonmagical humans. He was sure it would be a human who found the Grail. He had made a chair for the Round Table, called the Seige Perilous, designed to reveal the human destined to find the Grail. It would kill anyone but the man capable of finding it. When Galahad was admitted to the Round Table, he unwittingly sat in it, and did not die. When that news came to me, I knew I had done my task. Soon after, Galahad was left to search for the Grail with Launcelot's cousins, Bors and Perceval, the latter of whom was an uneducated magical child born of normal parents.

It was then I began my own quest: the search for Salazar. Since Albion presented such a strong front to Slytherin, he had retreated to the East to continue his work and gather his strength. I followed the trails of his destruction. Hundreds of villages had been emptied by the plague, by his soldiers, and by his magic. I could smell the lingering wildness of the faery folk; he had gathered the worst of them to wreck havoc on the world. Forests had been trampled by the Giants, and fires were left by the Dragons. The Centaurs left no trail, but I knew they too were allied with him. The Merpeople had long since left him once they knew the nature of the war he waged. In my new form, I was repulsed by the work he had done. Until recently, I had been willing to help him, and all for the sake of knowledge. So many were dead, and departed for who knows where; so many were left behind, to powerlessness and misery, for the sake of the power of one. And for the sake of my own knowledge, I might have delivered the same. I followed the path for a year, and kept my eyes open to what might have been my fate. After nearly a millennium, I was growing closer to human. Perhaps it had been the child, half-human Galahad. Perhaps he had as much given birth to me as I to him.

I found Slytherin alone in the highest reaches of the Himalayas. He was alone except for his son, Mordred, who had the same sullen eyes as his mother. He did not recognize me at first. When he did, he asked Mordred to leave. He asked me what I had done to myself. I asked him the same. He offered me secrets, again. He had so many new secrets, and I could nearly taste them. My old hunger had not left me, it seemed. There was only one secret I needed, and it was all I could take to satiate myself. I kissed him, for the last time, and it dropped into my mouth and bloomed in my stomach. I knew where he had gathered his troops. Then I left him.

In turning their focus to the search for the Grail, Helga and Godric had left Slytherin to his devices. They had left him to cut large swathes of suffering and pain in other lands. While Galahad pursued the Grail, I stayed Slytherin's hand as much as I could. After slaughtering those in his camp, I returned to the Faery Realm, to seal what borders I could against its wicked inhabitants. I could not seal it against Slytherin himself, and he returned, again and again, for fresh weapons. He began to go West, for the final battle. He gathered the remnants of his alliances. The centaurs had left him now, weakened by my attacks, and retreated into their kingdoms, never to speak to others again. The Giants and Dragons still made formidable allies. And, immortal, Slytherin himself was formidable. I attempted to stay his hand, but once again, secrets were my downfall. Now, they worked against me.

Slytherin entered Albion. Helga and Godric abandoned their search for the Grail. Arthur did likewise, and Perceval returned from Galahad's quest, since he was capable of magic. Once again, a great battle chose Hogwarts for its grounds. Again, I sent my ravens into the air to bear the brunt of the curses. Now, Slytherin turned my own power against me, and the ravens did not fall to the spells they intercepted. Instead they carried the spells back to us, and they were no longer my own; I could not turn them back. The Giants were immune to our magic, and formed a shield, but only after Mordred had broken through the front lines to battle Arthur. Helga drew the land up into mountains, which surrounded and then crushed them. Godric patrolled the sky on the wings of a hippogriff, attempting to repulse the Dragons. He managed to outmaneuver and blind them, but they still blindly sent fire out, inflicting damage on the humans of our side. Unbelievably, Arthur managed to fend Mordred's magical attack off, blocking every spell with Gryffindor's sword. Reinforcements prevented Launcelot from joining his side. It was Ganeida who finished the Dragons, creating a water-made net that enclosed them and prevented them from inflicting any more damage. The nets broke of their own accord when they retreated. I took on my former Faery subjects, and fared well, since they recognized me as their Queen and as often as not fell without striking me. Vivienne had gathered the merpeople, who drew many of the humans into the lake with their songs. They tried to draw Mordred in, but he simply cast a spell to make his ears unreachable. Bertilak and Sir Gawain fought back to back against magic and nonmagical foes alike, but the Green Knight could not prevent his former foe from falling.

Then there was the Dementor. It was the first of its kind, one of Salazar's new secrets, a wholly dark creation. A pall fell over the battlefield when it appeared, on both sides. It was under Slytherin's command, and it was headed straight for Arthur. Mordred turned from Arthur to those who surrounded him, cutting a clean path for the Dementor. Perceval attempted to stop him, but Mordred had silenced him with a spell before he uttered even a word. We did not know what the Dementor was doing when it pulled Arthur's face towards its hood with its wet, skeletal fingers. He was still alive, when the Dementor retreated. It wasn't until I inspected him that I realized what had happened. By then, it had done the same to Launcelot, and Godric.

Desperate, I went to Helga, and together we wove a wall into the air which surrounded Hogwarts. We spent the rest of the day warding it. I used every spell I knew, and then began to invent new ones. Vivienne took Perceval back to Galahad through her secret water passages, and the rest began to make their new homes within the castle. I spent my days inventing wards to prevent Slytherin from returning. Helga had gone to the Forbidden Forest to make an alliance with the Unicorns. When Vivienne returned, she brought me Launcelot's ring.

"Perhaps I should give it to Guinevere, but she is in no danger. It is you who will face Slytherin when the time comes, so you must have it," she said quietly, and I took it. Better that Guinevere should have had it. By the time the wall came down, years later, we discovered that everyone who remained at Arthur's court was dead.

We grew old, within our walls. We grew quiet. We could do nothing but wait, and outside the walls of Hogwarts the common world slowly festered, and we did not even know. It became a school again. We had no choice. Learning was all we had. We learned how to drive back the Dementor, with the word "Patronus". We learned how to kill them, with the word "Sunortap." The former required happiness; the latter innocence. Only three in the world possessed that, and they were searching for the Grail. We could not reach them. Godric was gone; Helga retreated into the forest permanently; I retreated into myself. It was up to our former students to run the school. The nonmagical people who had participated in the battle learned magic alongside the magical folk; the magical folk learned the art of swords and battle alongside the nonmagic. We thought these things may one day be of use. We were wrong. The end was simple.

Vivienne disappeared into the lake one day, and returned with my son. It occurred to me that Launcelot had never known him for who he was, and I was saddened at this. Galahad had found the Grail in the end. Bors had been killed, and Perceval driven to madness, convinced he might have saved Arthur if only he had managed to speak a spell. When the Grail finally appeared to him, Galahad's long journey was over, and that seed of unbreakable innocence in him was planted in sorrow and hardship. I could see that he now realized that he was more a product than an individual. He had not made himself; I had, and not for him, but for the needs of the world. Now he had the Grail, he had no more purpose, and could see that his purpose had never been his own. The cup was still full of the blood Salazar had filled it with; to the last Galahad would not kill. His duty done, the walls we had placed around Hogwarts fell, and he departed for another journey, one with neither destination nor function. I never saw him again, in this world or any other.

I went into the forest, walking along the river that feeds into the lake. I wanted to be alone when I destroyed Salazar's shield of blood. I walked a long time. I walked along the last of the white afternoon light, until it left me and my innocence some ways behind. The night washed over me and reminded me of my youth and deception and capacity for hunger. I did not stop until the morning bloomed red in the sky, and promised a new world. Then I knelt by the river and emptied the contents of the Grail into it, and washed it with the water and my hands. I spent a long time washing it, filling it with the clear water and emptying it again. It did not seem as though water belonged in the Grail. A shadow fell over me as I washed it.

"Thrice met, Salazar," I whispered. "You know the power of this number."

He said nothing, and I stood, discarding the Grail by the rocks. I had once done his bidding, and once turned against him, and many had paid the price for both. I had not seen him for many years. Old as he was, he looked very young. There was no wicked smile, and there was no cool mask. I saw his real face, because he had forgotten, seeing me with his cup, how to hide it. He looked as though he had made a very long journey only to have forgotten what his destination was supposed to be. He looked lost. "You would kill me, Rowena?" he asked, calling me by the first name he knew me by.

"I would do much, Salazar," I replied softly.

"I only wanted—" but he did not finish, because he did not know any longer what he wanted. So he raised his wand, and spoke the killing curse against me, but it did nothing, since I wore the ring of my son's father. Salazar realized this. He looked up, to the changing sky that had acted as my godfather, and then he nodded, at what thought or provocation I never knew. He knelt before me, his last day, and submitted. He did not fight until the last, or struggle to overcome these new odds. Perhaps he was brave; perhaps he redeemed himself. I do not know. Certainly of all the things I might have done, he did not expect this. I returned his curse to him, and he died a magical death, and I built a pyre by the river for him. After burning him, I submitted his ashes to the night sky. I knew my godfather would keep him so that he could not resurrect in the realm of Faery.

The Grail was interred in the Hogwarts grounds, into the cavern in which the boy named Ambrosia had revealed two dragons fighting. Once, we had all stood around the cavern, together, with our students, and Hogwarts had seemed just a trifle, the Faery land close by, and much to do, and much to learn. It seemed a fitting place to inter the Grail, with the two dragons dead. No one saw us do it; no one knew of the Grail's location but Helga and I. Still, many knew of the Grail.

In the end, Salazar won. Taking the Grail from him caused a curtain to fall on all of us. The magical forests were suddenly constrained, so that all the magical creatures they contained could not leave them, and so that no one without magic could enter them. The centaurs no longer had their freedom. The unicorns and the dragons no longer had their sentience. The giants no longer had the written word. The merpeople's language became incomprehensible. In such a way, each of the five great kingdoms was reduced, as a penalty for not giving Salazar everything he had demanded of them. Faery disappeared forever, severed permanently from us by a border I had never myself managed. Once its queen, I could now never return to it. And in order to keep the Grail a secret, we had secrets of our own to keep. We had to keep our affairs secret from the nonmagic among us. The realities of the old days turned to stories, and then to dust. He had ensured that, if we killed him, if we won the final battle, that the act would win his war. It is no mistake that science grew so well in this twice barren land.

The only thing that tied the old world to the new was that occasionally, in a world without magic, in an utterly normal family, a magical child would be born.

.((0)).

We are better than them.

She remembered those words well, because, as much as she didn't want to, as much as she'd never even voiced the thought in her head-- that was the thought that preserved Hermione throughout her Hogwarts education. Harry and Ron could never understand. Neither was even a half blood. Granted, she and Harry had similarities—those eleven Muggle years, and power. His in magic, hers in magic intellection. Those eleven muggle years. O'Bleeke's argument. She'd hated it because it had a certain kind of sense. Eleven muggle years.

Hermione read everything, of course, both muggle and magic, even after she had learned of her capacity. At one point, she'd gone through a phase of being fascinated by feral children. With the strange exception of Caspar Hauser, those children, raised without human contact or language or stimulus, past their prime learning years—their developmental windows—had never, ever attained normal ability. They were proof that a window of development existed. They were proof that if you received no stimulus during those important years, you could never get back what you could have had. Just as if you learned French beginning at age seven, you'd be at a distinct disadvantage to someone who'd been learning it since they were two, or three. And she remembered, because that phase had been during her second or third year, applying the case to herself. She was, magically, feral. She was at a distinct disadvantage to Draco Malfoy, no matter how much of a better student she was. Ron, first year: are you a witch or aren't you? It simply hadn't been her instinct, to use her wand. Hagrid, third year: Hermione can learn any spell she puts her mind to. "Puts her mind to" being the operative part of that equation. Harry, the eternal mediocre student, had faced Voldemort himself. Hermione had fallen, in turn, to a basilisk, to a minion with a handy silent purple spell. She had always wondered if she would catch up. And always thought, with every classroom problem neatly solved, with every spell handily mastered: well, I'm so much better than all of you, I'm sure to have caught up.

But this thing, in her lap, that she had pulled with her own hand from the library shelf, because it was in her very _blood_ (how had she not recognized how very powerful that term was?). This was every thing she had never allowed herself to dream of. This was the proof. That she was as good as Draco Malfoy. That she was as good as (and she loved him, like a brother, but still) Harry.

We are better than them. How could she look into Tom's eyes now, and not understand that deeply? Descended from a child born of books and speech and brains and the will of one of the most powerful witches to live? How could she dismiss that in this new estimation of herself?

"Mione?"

Hermione looked up, white-faced and shaken. She'd entirely forgotten that she was in a library. She'd forgotten she was no longer in her own time, that she had important things to accomplish in a short amount of time. She'd forgotten not to look Tom in the eye. How much could a person change in the length of time it took to read a bit of parchment?

"What is it?"

"I've found it."

"What?" he breathed, knowing exactly what she'd found but wanting it confirmed.

Hermione shook her head slowly. "Everything," she whispered, and pushed the parchment over to him.

.((0)).

This chapter took probably the longest of any, and is a story unto itself. It was interesting to write something that was more of a Arthurian fanfiction than a HP fanfiction. For those of you interested I'll tell you a bit about how it came about. For those of you who aren't aware, the Arthurian legends have many forms and have been told by many writers, who have each focused on various aspects of the myth. Merlin has many origins forms; the one I use comes mostly from Geoffrey of Monmouth. The vision of the dragons comes from the legends. In most stories he is indeed enamored of the Lady of the Lake. One of her incarnations, Viviane, she was said to have seduced all of Merlin's magic out of him and trapped him underneath a stone, but my Viviane would never; she was too smart and powerful in her own right to need his tutelage. Nimue, later Vivienne, was indeed said to be fey (half fey, as I put it), and did indeed raise Launcelot according to Ulrich von Zatzikhoven and many others. Many details of his story come from this tale, such as the ring Viviane gives him. Ganeida and Hellawas are sadly obscure and overlooked and thus much of my invention. Bertilak was the name the Green Knight gave Sir Gawain after fighting him, and Perceval might have said a word to heal the king but did not say it; here it was a spell that might have saved him. Galahad two is fitted in in such a way as to keep his story straight. In most versions he ascends to the Heavens after finding the Grail. Many details of the founders are pure invention; I was particularly happy with Helga Hufflepuff. Salazar the Faery King certainly came out of nowhere; Faery as it is here is all mine.

And there is Rowena, of course. One of my favorite stories is the tale of Vasilisa the beautiful (hey, check out my pen name). It's a pretty typical bad stepmother and wicked stepsisters story; they make her do all sorts of ridiculous chores, but she has a little doll that does all the work for her. One night, they contrive to get rid of her by putting out all the candles whose light they sew by, and send her out into the forest to get a light from Baba Yaga, which should ensure her death. As she travels, a red knight carrying the noon behind him, a black knight carrying night behind him, and a white night carrying the morning behind him pass her; these are Rowena's godfathers which figure so prominently here. So she goes to Baba Yaga's, where more chores are set to her, which her doll does, and she gets the light. The light is a skull on a stick, which is mentioned in the opening. When she brings it back, the skull flies around the room and kills her stepmother and stepsisters, and she returns to Baba Yaga's, where she does more chores, including sewing some very nice fabric which ends up getting her married to a prince.

So that was the start of it. From then on, Rowena became an amalgam of characters to fit in with the Arthurian legends. Morrigan, an early incarnation of Morgan LaFay, was said to often appear as a crow or a raven and foretell the fate of a battle (fit well with the raven aspect). Very often she would appear to a soldier who was to die, washing his clothes. So here I have her washing a cup. That took me to Morgana LeFay, and the fairy heritage of Morgan LaFay led to the Faery (which is, again, pretty much wholly my conception of it), and Rowena's ascent to power within it. Rowena' s return to the common world as Morgana allowed me to reconfigure Hogwarts as a one-time, female-dominated Avalon.


	23. Chapter 23

I'm going back to the shorties for a little while. OK, replies to those who reviewed the past two chapters: EriErika127 and lily1121, thanks a bunch. BexDrake, thanks for the plug on your hilarious page, Kylie23 thank you, Vamprisslizy tnemmoc revelc eht rof sknaht, grace1237 thx, Sailor Moon Rose I love your long reviews (oh, a lot of the proofs are actually based on logical proofs that I studied, but what I do with them is just so lazy and contrived compared to what's actually required for logical proofs), Hoshi-chan-1 and Erieka127, you flatter me and I love flattery, w1cked angel, just wait and see how much I make you cry, alianne thanks so much for the very very flattering comment. Oh, flattery, there is not enough of it in the world.

.((0)).

Hermione drew her cloak around her tighter, but the cold wind was sharp enough to still penetrate. It was so cold it wasn't even snowing. It suited her. It drew out the feeling that something inside her was coming to a dangerous boil. She shook her head. Maybe someone like her shouldn't find out she was the Heir of a Founder. Certainly the knowledge had not benefited Tom. "Better than them," she whispered. What if they were?

She held her hand out, palm up, into the wind. Complete the Time Machine. Find Harry. Kill Voldemort. Save Ron. Save Tom. It was all there, in her hand, and for the first time she felt in her bones that she could do it. It was as though Rowena Ravenclaw's account of her life had imbued her with the same kind of inhuman willpower. Hermione closed her eyes. And then?

And then it could all go terribly wrong. She and Tom, in her future. Tom was not one to live quietly. And Hermione didn't want anything like the kind of life she had wanted previously. There was a time when all she wanted was a brilliant career, perhaps in the Department of Mysteries, perhaps in politics defending the rights of the magical world's outcasts, perhaps even as an Auror. Also, she had vague notions of being with Ron, and Harry beside them, for the rest of her life. The last was a dream now. As for the former… she felt she was destined for something entirely different. Something greater. She had no idea what it was, but it scared her.

And, a small whisper in the back of her head that she daren't acknowledge: how did Lord Voldemort find out about the Grail, if not for her?

.((0)).

Tom sat back in his chair and looked past Ravenclaw's parchment over towards the chair that Mione had so recently vacated. So he had submitted, in the end. He had been beaten. Tom wondered if he would do the same. He had not thought himself capable of it until the night Voldemort had taken over. There was a moment when he was prepared to sacrifice everything, including himself, in order to protect Mione. Even then, he had not given up the fight against Voldemort. Still, he might have given up to her.

The story repeats.

He did not want to be like Slytherin. He did not want to submit, to be defeated. Perhaps the answer lay in knowing exactly what he wanted, rather than letting himself be driven to a blind pursuit of power. He could choose a different path than Slytherin, than his own future self had chosen.

He knew much of what Slytherin had built under the school, much of his secret tunnels and rooms, and Tom knew that there were places more secret than the Chamber of Secrets. He was sure that an underground path led to the Grail, that Slytherin had built a path towards the cavern made by Merlin's vision. He was sure this was a secret Ravenclaw had not found, or if she had, expected no one else to find. He could help Hermione. He could find it.

And, a small whisper in the back of his head that he daren't acknowledge, asked if three lives was not a price worth paying for immortality. Whatever path he chose now, however more it veered towards rightness, he still did not want it to end.


	24. Chapter 24

Thank you thank you to my latest reviewers. I'm sorry not to be able to thank each of you, but the country I'm in has a crap internet connection and opening up all the windows to track you all down would probably take and hour. But honestly, thank you. I don't know how much in the way of updates I'm capable of here, but I do keep plugging away at it, so hopefully I will be able to bring you all to the excellent conclusion. Now excuse me, forgive me for the lateness, and I will bring you another update as soon as I'm capable. Ta

.((0)).

The Silversmith Manse in the country bespoke its long Ravenclaw history. It tended towards the silver and the blue, as well as the long corridors one found in the Ravenclaw Dormitories. The drawing room bore an uncanny resemblance to the high-ceilinged common room. None of the seated but Adrian could appreciate it, since he was the only one who had ever been inside. He sat beside her on the inclined silver bench, while Jude, Jean, and Pendrake sat in a loose semicircle around them.

"I hate to speak so gauchely," Alicia began, "but I have been thinking, and I am sure of myself and my ability to convince you. I believe Tom Riddle has become ruthless, and careless. He seeks power but he doesn't know what for. This is, as you know, the danger of plebians; they know nothing about wielding the power they seek. I think we should put an end to it before it becomes disastrous."

Pendrake looked as if he wanted to speak, but it was Jean who spoke first. "I understand you, Alicia. Really, I do. But I must speak. My father…" he sighed and looked up, towards the ceiling. "In teaching me to develop magical talent, I have become uncommonly gifted at seeing it. Speaking plainly, Tom is the most talented wizard I have ever seen, in terms of raw magical power. None of us could best him in a fight. Furthermore, he is also quite as intelligent as you, Alicia, and likely a bit more cunning. In short, he is capable of great things, and attaching ourselves to him ensures greatness for ourselves."

"You do not know what you attach yourself to," replied Alicia.

"Don't be condescending. I know perfectly well that Tom would turn against any of us within a second. That is why I feel it so unwise to cross him. He is simply too clever, and as long as he is alive he will have his revenge on all who cross him. Think of it. He managed to turn the Slytherin House entire from invective to fearful worship, and he was fifteen at the time."

"He managed to do so only by allying himself with you," said Alicia, softly. "I think we should speak more of how this alliance came about. There is something about it that doesn't smell quite right."

"I agree," said Pendrake. "Let's speak of it."

.((0)).

If she closed her eyes, Bellonia Zabini could actually sense the shape of the various magical wards they used to constrain her. It was not, like her holding cell, a small cube. One of the primary wards ran the length of the building, outlining every cell, filling the spaces in between. It felt light blue. There was another that pulsed at the intersections with the primary ward, spreading into a sphere. A third, felt like a pyramid. There were other, lesser wards underneath, vying for her attention. She had managed to isolate one. She could not, however, identify any of them, although she had very well-grounded suspicions. They could take away her wand, but they could not take away her magic. Thank Merlin for that, or she would have absolutely nothing else to do.

When they came for her, she was actually contemplating muggle-style suicide.

She arranged herself when they took her. She was dirty from some weeks worth of accumulated filth, but she was still beautiful, and she still had pride. She gathered her strength as a pair of guards held her at wand-length and escorted her down a narrow hall. Perhaps they were bringing her to her execution. That would be nice. She was silent as they walked, wandering in her quieted mind, her fate, whatever it might be, accepted. Whatever else she might be, she was strong.

The guards led her through a series of doors, magically unlocking each. They spent more time with the wards as they progressed, until the last door, at which they spent the greater part of half an hour. She was led into a room outlined in stainless steel; the walls, the table, and the spare seats were all made of the same material. It reminded her of something—a meat locker, perhaps. Easy to clean. The guards sat her in a cold seat and shackled her wrists to its armrests. Then they left her alone. Bellonia closed her eyes, quelling her annoyance at being ignorant of the situation. She had been here long enough not to mind being told nothing. Her wrists, against the cool steel of her chair, grew gradually cold and numb. After an hour, the door opened.

Perhaps opened wasn't the right word for it. The door was a normal size; the man who stepped through it was not, so the door, as it opened, expanded to a pre-established size in order to admit him. The man was so large that Bellonia could feel the warmth radiating off of him before he'd gotten through the doorway. He was covered in skins flayed from dragons and other magical creatures. He was not entirely clean, and seemed to have recently been engaged in a battle of some kind, owing to a bent nose and a copious cascade of blood down the left-hand portion of his face . The blood did not come from a wound; it was not his own. Bellonia knew it was Grindelwald despite the fact that she had never seen the man, or even a picture of him, before.

It did not matter. What could they do to her? It wasn't as though she was a prisoner of war. At the most, she would die, and that was unlikely to be a more troubling experience than her present one. So she held herself straight and watched with a certain amount of detachment as Grindelwald arranged himself into the stainless steel chair and table. She had not noticed until now, perhaps due to the cleanliness of their design, that they were overlarge.

"You know things," he began. "I do not care for the reasons you are here. If you are able to provide me with some useful knowledge, I will let you live. Do you agree?"

A slight smile came to Bellonia's lips. It might be a ruse, but it was still worth trying.

"Of course. Where would you like me to begin?"

"I wish to more about Monsieur Knauss's last operation. Who was he attempting to apprehend?"

.((0)).

Hermione had not returned to the forest since her nearly fatal encounter with the centaurs. Truth be told, it had started to hold some of the darkness she remembered from her early years, before the Trio's thorough exploration of it. It wasn't so long ago she'd been terrified of the centaurs. They'd nearly killed her and Harry in her fifth year, after all, along with Umbridge. If it hadn't been for Grawp, she didn't know what would have happened. Her association with them had done nothing to alleviate her wariness of them, and their attempt to kill her put her off ever seeking them out again. Still, now she knew more about them than any human did. She knew why they hated humans; they alone of the Inhuman Empires knew what had been taken from them. And Rowena had inflicted her own damage on them. She didn't feel scared of them anymore, after reading Rowena's diary. She wasn't sure she was scared of anything anymore.

She knew she was following the same stream Rowena had all those years ago, when she had washed the blood from the Grail and faced the mortal Salazar Slytherin. She was not surprised to turn around a bend and see Tom's tall, solitary figure, staring down at the water that had carried his ancestor's immortality away. He sensed her presence without looking up. "This is where it happened," he murmured, almost to himself. "Can you feel it?"

She could. Ever since he had brought her back from near death she could feel the remnants of the Founders' magic like the blood pumping in her veins. The trail she had been following grew stronger towards where Tom was standing. She knew there was another trail, approaching from the opposite direction, ending.

"He just gave up," said Tom.

Hermione took a shuddering breath.

"The story repeats," he said angrily, still not looking at her. "The story repeats, he said, and I saw it when I took his memories out of his head, that bloody backwards centaur. What happened with them, will happen with us. It repeats, and he just gave up."

"Tom," she whispered, pale.

"You would, wouldn't you?" He turned to her, eyes searing into her. "I saved you, twice, and you would kill me, wouldn't you?"

Hermione squared her shoulders. "Given the choice between the world and you, Tom, yes. It's hardly a choice. But you don't have to give me that choice, do you? Things are already much different than they were before. Time is a strange and mutable thing, you've got to know that from what she wrote. If numbers don't conform to time, why should we?"

"Maybe we don't have a choice."

"Do you feel like murdering muggleborns in a quest to complete Salazar Slytherins' noble endeavor? If not, that means we have a choice."

"It's not that," he protested, staring back down at the river. "It wasn't blood prejudice. He wanted the whole world to be the same self-willed chaos that the Faery Land was."

"The Faery Land is gone, Tom."

"It's not gone. I know it's not gone."

"Good Merlin, Tom!"

"I need something, damnit!" Tom spat. "What kind of a life would you have us lead? Would you have us hide from the wizarding world for the rest of our life, or to restore the gates to a land that offers us everything we were born for?"

Hermione closed her eyes. She was afraid of the part of her that whispered, instantly, yes. The greater part of her still abided by rules until there was no choice but to disobey them. The greater part of her wondered if it wasn't better that the Faery Land was sealed off. "I don't know," she said finally.

His eyes were burning. "I won't give up. Not like him. I will not spend my life hiding and I will not sacrifice myself to obtain some temporary good."

Hermione took a step back, and he caught her in his arms and didn't let go of her, not with his eyes, not with anything.

"You know you want it, too," he whispered.

"Tom," she protested, her voice barely a whisper.

"Even if it's just a little bit," he continued, and kissed her, brought her head up so she met his lips. "You'll see," he mumbled into her mouth. "We'll find a way, we'll take everything." He kissed her again, deeper, this time, and she couldn't fight against him, not with the half-nature of her protest. She gave into him, but she was afraid. More of herself than of him.


	25. Chapter 25

Hi guys-- I know, at long effing last, huh? Well I've been busy, having moved btween three countries in the last year. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Thank you reviewers, new and old, I will thank you more specifically in the next chapter, which should be up in the next couple of days. I was really losing this story for a while and now it's back. This chapter is the beginning of the last act in the drama, so to speak. Things might move along a lot quicker. BTW, for those of you guys joining now, this ff was started after the fifth book, so I really haven't incorporated the revelations of the last two books, not the information about Grindelwald, or Dumbledore, or Slughorn, or Tom, or horcruxes. In this story Voldemort gains his immortality through the grail, outlined in Chapter 22 I think. So OK, back to it. At least you still have some Harry Potter to read now that the books are all finished, right? Oh, and all you Hermione/Ron haters-- I'm not the fondest of this pairing, but my challenge to myself in this story was to keep it as canonical as possible while making a romance between Tom Riddle and Hermione seem plausible. Just so you know. Thanks again if you've hung in there this long. Enjoy!

.((0)).

It Begins

Tom's bare arm inclined downwards towards the mattress in front of him, propping up his torso. Dark-dimmed gold sheets were wrapped around his naked waist. Hermione lay across from him, clutching the sheets against her chest in a concession to modesty. Tom was watching her, and past her, his altered interior of Grawp's cave. He had created a room here for them, which remained hidden when Hermione wasn't present. Hermione's head was on the pillow, an ankle curled around one of Tom's, her eyes half-closed. She could easily fall asleep. She and Tom had begun to keep to a bizarre set of hours at Hogwarts, owing to their research into finding the Grail and the probable location of Harry's captivity in the future. If they found the Grail, Hermione was sure, they would find the hiding place. She could tell Tom was looking for Faery. At first he wasn't open about his search for it, rifling through wizarding children's stories and histories of pre-Hogwarts Britain. He disappeared for a day, returning during the night along the humpback witch's secret passage. When she saw him with old muggle books she took it as an admission, and half of her hoped that he would find it. The other half hadn't even begun to contemplate what kind of life they would lead if they returned to her time.

"Mione," said Tom, tugging a curl into straightness.

"Mmm?" Her eyes opened.

"Tell me what it's like in your time. When you're from."

Hermione paused, and then shifted so that she was half-sitting like Tom. "I don't know," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She still hadn't told him her real name, although presumably at some point she would have to. Hermione didn't know when she could start trusting Tom, start being sure that he really would lead a different life than Voldemort. But she had told him nothing about herself, and it was only now that she realized she was saving the information in case, in case something went wrong and he became Voldemort and could find her in her own time, perhaps before she had ever been aware that she would come back in time. If he could find her, he could find Harry. Already he knew too much, she had given him too much information. She would tell him when they went into the Time Machine, she told herself. "Maybe we should wait."

She could tell he understood exactly why she didn't want to tell him. He half-rolled his eyes and laid on his back, his ankle unbuckling from hers. She sighed.

"It's fine," he said. "It doesn't make sense for you to say anything until we go." He was glaring at the ceiling as though it were a particularly difficult potion.

"Thank you," she managed, and half closed her eyes again, willing her mind into that coming period of time. There were more things to plan than Harry's rescue. Money, for instance. Hermione knew that the galleons currently in Tom's use were in her own time's currency and that duplicate galleons with the same serial number would bring them under suspicion. Even if she used the spell she's used on the D.A. galleons, it was detectable. There were her savings, but she didn't know how they would get more money, and hadn't brought any books back with her that might help her find out how to construct Ministry-proof false identities. They would need different wands in order to keep from being registered. Two Hermiones and a resurrected Tom Riddle would certainly bring the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry and Ron and worst of all, Dumbledore. "We're going to be fugitives," Hermione said. Tom turned to her. She sighed, and made up her mind. "The Allies will win the war. Grindelwald will fall. The sun will set on the British Empire. The muggles will invent little movies they call televisions and the wizards will invent moving photographs. She smiled. A werewolf will go to Hogwarts. Dumbledore will replace Dippet as headmaster."

"No surprise there."

She smiled and, without bitterness, so did he. "They'll hold the first TriWizard tournament in a hundred years. They'll ban flying carpets, even those with an invisibility shield. Gringotts will open a branch in Egypt." She looked at him. "And we'll find the Grail, and Faery, and then find lives for ourselves."

"Yes," said Tom. "Nice long lives with enough time to accomplish things with." His eyes seemed red in the dull light, a dark shade close to black.

.((0)).

The last time they met together that holiday, Pendrake Malfoy and Jean LeStrange and Pendrake Rosier and Alicia Silversmith, they were in the Foret Sacre, the very forest that Hermione has professed to frequenting as a child. It was good luck on her part that she had never said as much to Jean LeStrange, because he knew the forest very well. He and his brother used to go hunting in it with their father. Gabriel had always been the better hunter. That was why they needed him today.

Alicia had never told any of the group about her meeting with Gabriel LeStrange. When the decision had been made to call for him, she had written him a letter and sent it off with Mellours, the LeStrange family owl. It had only been three pages long but she thought she had made greater leaps and untied more complicated knots than in any of her arithmancy assignments. It was an admission of what she had done, and a justification of it, and a plea for both help and to keep their knowledge of each other a secret. She was prepared to magically procure the attitude she hoped for, but the debt she felt to him required her to try the genteel approach first.

"Alicia,

I discovered what you did not a little while before your letter. You may be less than pleased to learn that Bellonia Zabini has obtained an early release due to some matter of information or another. At Hogwarts I was a Slytherin. You do not need to explain your motives to me. It doesn't lessen the pleasure I took in you.

-- Gabriel"

They had not set eyes on each other since their one-sided affair. As the snow-nourished hanging white ivy parted from a nearby copse of trees, Alicia searched for his face. Caught by her gaze, she was the first one his eyes met, and they revealed nothing. Something like an agreement hung in the air between them. Alicia turned to Adrian, who was whispering with Jean.

"If we do this thing, it has to be perfect. We can't afford to fail. I wasn't even aware of what he did to me when he showed me the cave, not at all until I used Alicia's Pensieve. If we fail, we may not even remember."

"He might do worse. There's other ones he likes too. Using the Imperius on Malfoy. And Cruciatus."

"And Mione Potter!"

Adrian just returned his stare at that. None of them knew who Mione Potter really was, despite the fact that they had discovered her identity wasn't real. Still, they had seen the entire story behind her use of the Imperius. That last was at Alicia's behest. She had insisted on using her Pensieve to probe the memory in an effort to discern Mione's motives. She had to know at what point Mione would be prompted to take such measures. It would be better not to face her, or Tom. There was no way to tell who would come off better, not for sure. But they had to know more about Mione. Alicia had been adamant on that point. They had a very good idea of exactly what Tom was after. "He likes his mental spells, Riddle does. Have you noticed how he uses his lessons to prove that he's the superior spellcaster? He wants us to know all the tools he has at his disposal, should we think of turning. Even if all he has to do is cast a quick spell to get us to do what he wants."

Jean frowned. He said nothing, but his eyes were focused in the way they usually did when he was forming an idea. "Yes. But perhaps if we let him come off better, we can… create a window of opportunity of sorts."

Adrian looked troubled. "Taking a risk like that requires a foolproof plan."

"Exactly. It must be foolproof."

.((0)).

When the students of Hogwarts returned after the Christmas holidays, Hermione and Tom no longer had the school to themselves. Only nine students had stayed in the castle over the break, and the chances of running into anyone while during their meetings and encounters were low. They were not to be seen, this much had been a complicit agreement between them since the beginning. Tom had to resume his Head Boy duties, monitoring the halls after hours and attending irregular meetings, which included Jean LeStrange. He also had to resume his Slytherin meetings in the cave. Alicia had asked Hermione to supervise her thesis for her Arithmancy project, which was nearly finished.

Her paper was good work, of a publishable standard even if it wasn't groundbreaking. Her algorithms and charts were intricate yet elegant, a reasonable template for answering the questions about how transitional spells operated. All that was needed was for Alicia to back up one of her arguments with experimental data. Hermione read through it without making many suggestions for improvements. When she finished reading it, she found Alicia giving her a shrewd look.

"What is it between you and Tom Riddle, Mione?"

Hermione guarded her reaction. The question was barbed, not to mention unexpected. "I don't know what you mean," she said neutrally.

"It seems rather epic, you know, you and him."

"I meant I don't know what you mean by asking me such an inappropriate question."

Alicia's eyebrow arched in mock conspiracy. "Would you classify your behavior as inappropriate?"

"Stop being a cow. What are you getting at?"

The sarcasm in Alicia's face was replaced by a probing expression. "You know Tom's a half-blood, don't you, Mione?"

"Is this honestly a—" She shook her head.

"I know the Potters love their mugglish wizards. By the way, what are you? Pureblood? Halfblood? Mudblood?"

"What?"

"Maybe what I mean is: who are you, if you're not Mione Potter?"

Hermione glared at Alicia. "As I told Pendrake, my identity is protected under law as a French refugee."

"Well, all right," said Alicia with a concessionary air. "Of course you don't want to talk about that. Tell me what you think of Tom, Mione."

Hermione shook her head. "I refuse to have this conversation."

"How did you feel about his using the Imperius on Pendrake? Oh, you did too, but that instance I understand quite well. Do you even know the full extant of what he did with it?"

"All of this," said Hermione, "is well known by the administration. You have nothing with which to blackmail me."

"Oh, I don't want to blackmail you, Mione, don't be gauche. I want to talk some sense into you. You know, Professor Dumbledore's never been very fond of him, despite the fact that nearly everyone's come round to like him now. If they're not terrified of him, that is."

"Who's terrified of him?"

"You're not?"

"Should I be?"

Alicia's pale eyes narrowed, and she leaned forwards. "You're not an idiot, Mione Potter. You know very well that Tom Riddle is terrifying. If you've ever seen what he's capable of, and I warrant you have, you know he's dangerous. I've suspected since fifth year that he was the one behind all those basilisk attacks—did Dumbledore tell you about those?"

"Yes, he did, actually. I can see where this is going. Are you about to warm me or threaten me?"

"Threaten to go to Dumbledore if you don't break off your relations with Tom? Is that what you were thinking? No, that would be coarse. But, the next time you're listening to Tom's various machinations, be aware of how easy it is to become entangled in them. Merlin knows I've practically been his secretary for Adrian's sake."

Hermione wanted to break off the conversation. She hated having someone privy to her secrets, and Alicia was more right than wrong. She was right about Dumbledore, her suspicions about Tom's crime were correct. Alicia was speaking about Tom in a way that Hermione hadn't heard for nearly half a year. Even Dumbledore approached the proposed task of killing young Tom Riddle with sadness, treating it as a necessary evil. She had forgotten how it was when she had not known the Dark Lord, not even encountered him, and had wished for and worked towards only his destruction. Hermione stood, determined to end the conversation firmly.

"Wait," said Alicia, looking at a watch she pulled out of the pockets of her robes.

.((0)).

Tom stood in front of the four chairs, barely looking at his followers. "Defensive and Offensive Transfiguration," he stated, waiting for the boys to absorb the topic of the day's lesson. "It is an exceedingly difficult skill to acquire, and I'm not absolutely sure that all of you are guaranteed of success. However, since it often takes years to master, I believe it would be wise to embark upon the subject. The theory, of course, will come up in the NEWTs, but none of the examiners expects us to know how to perform it correctly."

Tom realized that the four boys were staring at him with unusual concentration, Pendrake with his anger far too unmasked. "Malfoy," he said softly. "Do you know the easiest method of locomotive transfiguration?"

"Of course, Riddle. A standard transfiguration spell followed by an animation spell."

Tom didn't like the way Pendrake intoned his surname. "Of course, you always do know the shortcuts, don't you, Malfoy?"

Malfoy snickered. Tom glanced towards the other three. Jude had a dawning grin on his face, and Adrian was smirking, and Jean was watching him inscrutably. Tom cocked an eyebrow and drew closer to the circle of chairs. "Well?" he practically whispered. "Has anyone got something to say?"

It was Adrian who spoke. "How is it shagging the Arithmancer's apprentice, Tom? I told you she was a dish, didn't I?"

With a quick, brutal movement, Tom had Adrian's collar in his fist and his face an inch away. Adrian regained his feet underneath him. "I hear your pretty little bint of a sister's a dish, Adrian, so why don't you have a care about what you say and how you say it."

He forced Adrian back into his chair manually. "Am I perfectly clear?"

Jean stood. "I'm afraid that we have decided, as a group, that we no longer need your guidance, Tom," he said stiffly.

"After all, you are only a half-blood," said Malfoy with a sneer. He attempted to stand, as well. Tom forced him back to his chair, with Jean as well, and entwined all the boys at once to their chairs with coils of silvery ropes.

"What are you going to do, Tom?" said Adrian, looking unconcerned at his predicament. "Keep us here until we agree with you? We're expected back at the castle, you know. How would you like Dumbledore to discover our little group all tied up with a spell utterly forbidden at this school, not to mention off grounds and after hours?"

Tom stood in front of Adrian and extended his wand. Adrian was unable to disguise an expression of mingled fear and shock, which he quickly mastered. "Legilimens," said Tom. He smiled as he rifled through the contents of Adrian's mind. "Oh, so it's just Alicia waiting to send Dippet out, then?" He stepped away from the group. "Brilliant plan, my fellows," he said in disgust. He began to walk towards the exit. "You will stay here until I return, with Miss Silversmith. You shall think of fitting punishments for your behavior." Before he left, he turned and extended his wand a last time towards the group. "Accio wands," he said, almost as an afterthought, and caught all four neatly in his left hand.

.((0)).

Alicia took out a watch from her robes and frowned at it.

"I really should be going," said Hermione.

"Wait," said Alicia. "They were due a quarter of an hour ago."

"Pardon?"

Alicia looked at Hermione in an appraising way. "I'm afraid our discussion about Tom Riddle isn't over, Mione. The boys were planning something tonight." She paused again as she looked at her watch. "They were due back at half past nine. They said I was to expect them."

"What," said Hermione stiffly, in the beginnings of panic, "were they planning?"

"Something that makes me think if they aren't back by now I should report their absence to someone."

"Alicia, what did they say they would do?"

"They were going to quit Tom's little club."

"That's it?"

Alicia smiled. "That's all they told me."

Hermione watched Alicia's expression. She was too calm, and there was something entirely untrustworthy about her. "And you think Tom would do something?"

The look that Alicia gave her now was more honest. "Do you think Tom wouldn't?"

"It would be highly erroneous to go making accusations for which you have little support," said Hermione. "How late are they now?"

"Twenty minutes," said Alicia.

"Fine. We'll wait. We'll make sure."

"How long?"

"Say an hour?"

"Ever endure an hour of the Cruciatus Curse?"

Hermione flinched slightly. She couldn't help herself. "Then let's go find them."

The look Alicia gave her was arch. "Do you know where they are?"

"Yes, I do," Hermione replied briskly, standing up. "So let's be off—oh."

Alicia turned to Hermione and gasped. Standing in an aisle between two rows of bookshelves, was Tom Riddle. "Really, Alicia, that's just sordid. And there will be no need to come to me. I will come to you." His eyes flickered over to Hermione. "I see she made sure to keep you close by. This is all a very orchestrated affair."

Hermione turned to Alicia. "What the hell is going on? What did they do?" She looked at Tom. "What did you do?"

Tom sighed and twirled his wand around in his fingers, and Hermione's hand unconsciously stretched to her own wand. "I, my dear, have tied the turncoats to their chairs so they have a chance to sit and think about what they've done. Is that a lamb-like enough punishment for you?" He turned to Alicia. "And there must be punishment. Alicia, all settled to go to Dippet or Dumbledore and discover me in the act of my brutal reprisals. Not to mention the turncoats."

"Tom," said Hermione, and Alicia had a look on her face very close to a sneer. "What can you possibly do?"

"Oh, I'm creative," he said, still twirling his wand in his fingers. "Certainly more creative than the Cruciatus. I prefer to play with the Imperius curse. Mione knows it too."

There was a brief moment where Alicia's eyes opened in horror, but when they came to rest on Hermione reverted to their original expression. It was clear she didn't think Hermione capable of joining Tom's actions. She was right. Hermione went to stand in front of Tom, blocking him from Alicia. "Tell me what you're going to do," she said.

"Something continuous. Just until the end of school." His eyes were blazing, and Hermione realized how angry he was, how determined he was to rule every aspect of his life.

"The Imperius?" she mouthed, and Tom nodded, slightly. It was no matter. Alicia understood everything that passed between them. In a panic, she attempted to immobilize Hermione. But, as ever, Hermione's shielding charm protected her from damage. She turned to Alicia and flicked her wand. A set of silvery ropes bound her wrists together. Tom was looking at them in an amused way.

"Curious," he said. "I did the same thing."

"We can't do it this way," she said. "We can't Imperius them."

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"Yes," said Hermione, glancing warily at Alicia. "Let's just go to the cave. I'll tell you on the way."

Tom led the way out, and Alicia stared disbelievingly at Hermione. "Honestly? You're going to do what he says?"

Hermione gestured towards the door. "There's a lot you don't understand."

Alicia shook her pale head ruefully. "I'm quite sure." But she still had that strange, doubtable air to her, as though she was observing the situation more than objecting to it. Hermione stood behind her and kept a close eye on her.

Alicia betrayed no surprise at the secret passage they used to get to the Forbidden Forest, or at the long route towards Grawp's cave. Hermione wondered if Adrian had showed the cave to her before. When they reached a clearer segment of the path, Tom dropped behind and wordlessly cast a muffliato in Alicia's direction. "So what are your ideas?"

Hermione watched his face warily. "What happened?"

Tom's face was a mask. "A little coup. Nothing I can't put right."

"By torturing them?"

A hard look came into his eyes. "We've been through this. I'll do what I need to. If you can think of how to do it gently, then I'll do it gently."

Hermione nodded, and took so long speaking that Tom had to prod her again for her suggestion. "I don't like it much better. But we can obliviate them."

Tom nodded. "Like the centaurs."

"Only they didn't put an arrow in you, which is why I don't like it."

"You don't have to come," Tom suggested. Then, before she could assure him that she was coming, he added, "Unless you want to make sure I don't do anything objectionable."

"Why would I do such a thing? After all, you're so honest and trustworthy. Your motives are consistently transparent, and you're never willing to compromise your morals."

Tom laughed, and she smiled a bit in return. Alicia moved calmly in front of them, following the path. Hermione chanced a look at Tom, wondering if he noticed anything strange about the situation. A little coup. Hermione wasn't sure what had happened, but it seemed like a very poorly planned coup. But it didn't make sense. Pendrake had quite effectively blackmailed her; Adrian seemed a competent enough person, and Jean was up to his ears in dark magic. And Alicia was a part of it. Alicia, who would top the year if it weren't for Tom, and who wasn't behaving like someone who'd been caught and was about to be punished.

"Be careful," whispered Hermione as they began to walk up an incline and ascend towards the cave. "Something doesn't add up."

Tom nodded, and then moved to the front of their little group, taking the lead up the mountain path to the cave. Without even realizing it, Hermione waited for Alicia to ascend before her in order to keep her in between the two of them. Alicia moved up the rocks with little speed but much grace, and Hermione followed her slow movements warily. When they reached the cave, all four boys were silent and calm. Hermione watched Alicia exchange a look with Jean. Jean, not Adrian. Something was happening.

"You should be happy that I'm—how did you put it, Adrian? Shagging the Arithmancer's apprentice? Otherwise you'd lose your will to me tonight. Because of her, I've decided it will only be your memories."

There was no surprise in evidence. Jude looked as though he were about to embark on an angry outburst, but he managed to stifle it. The other boys still looked calm, and Alicia still was standing quietly.

The silence stretched and Hermione stood uncomfortably behind Tom. She watched as he walked from Slytherin boy to Slytherin boy, touching his wand to each forehead in turn and whispering "Legilimens." To find out what must be deleted, Hermione knew. He came to Alicia last. She looked unblinkingly into Tom's eyes, as though inviting him into her thoughts, offering them to him. And she remembered how good an Occlumens Snape had been, and about how her time's Voldemort has never even considered that a person might be able to resist his legilimency. How she had learned occlumency because of just this. Tom looked at Hermione. "Do it to me," he told her.

So they could work together, Hermione knew. She sighed and pointed her wand to his temple. "Legilimens" she intoned. Her eyebrows furrowed as she attempted to make the flood of memories come into sense. Malfoy's memories first, beginning with his revelation of Tom's blood status in his fifth year. The incident with Jean, revealed by a Pensieve in Alicia's French house. The turning of Jean from Tom's most stringent supporter to the person who had come up with the plan—this plan. She could find no other plan between Alicia and Jean than this.

Tom was watching her. "Shall we begin?"

Hermioned nodded shortly. Obliviating a muggle was a simple enough thing, and it was simple enough to delete the short-term memory from someone's repertoire of experience, but it was much harder work here. A wizard knew what a gap in their memory implied. So Tom and Hermione did not take away the group's meeting at Alicia's residence, but emptied it of its revelations and plans. They ameliorated Alicia's fermenting suspicions and decisions, planted alternative explanations into her proofs. They took away some of the memories that particularly angered Pendrake, erased the factors that allowed him to break free of Tom's control. They altered the words that had persuaded Jude and Jean into an alliance, changed the nature of shared conversations between Alicia and Adrian.

When they were finished, they marched them back to the school, through their nightly oblations, and then into bed. It was the only time Hermione allowed the Imperius to be used. It was for necessity, not punishment. It was a wonder they managed to bring everyone into their separate dormitories without capture. They did run into the caretaker, Greaves, and used a distraction charm on him. Hermione escorted Alicia into the Ravenclaw dormitories, and Tom took his fellow Slytherins. They met afterwards, an hour later, at the halfway point between their dormitories.

"Is it done?" he asked.

Hermione nodded, unhappy and unsure about what she had just done.

Tom seemed to sense it, and pressed his lips briefly to her forehead and thanked her. Then they retired to their rooms and went to bed.

.((0)).

Alicia woke up the next morning. Her socks were still on, which was odd, and as she looked over to her toiletry cabinet she could see a note on top of the Pensieve she had recaptured from Bellonia Zabini. She wiped the sleep out of her eyes and walked over to the cabinet, and withdrew the note and cover from her Pensieve. The note said only: "Look into the Pensieve." She had a feeling she ought to obey the note quickly, and she noticed at that moment that the note was in her own handwriting. She plunged her face into the teeming memories contained in the Pensieve, and spent a long time bent over its surface.

When she finally retreated, there was a smile on her face. Everything was going according to plan. She had had the boys spill all their most pertinent memories into the Pensieve the other night; she had already poured her own memories in. Not just what she wanted to remember, but what she needed to forget, lest Tom use his memory charms. The fact of the Pensieve being in her dormitory, among her toiletries as thought it were one. She went to the closet to retrieve her cloak, where she had stored a gift from her aunt Lyda. It was a globe that could capture the happenings which surrounded it. The more you could tune into the globe, the better it recorded the happenings. Alicia was fairly decent at it, good enough to understand everything that had passed the night before. Mione Potter, who wasn't even Mione Potter anyways, was on Tom's side. And there was something deeper going on, Alicia was sure. They were trying to do something together. "There's a lot you don't understand," Mione had said. That must have been after she had made the decision to Obliviate them, thinking that small hint would be lost to Alicia.

She would have to bring the boys in to get their memories back. The first stage of the plan was complete and she'd gotten rather more of an idea that Mione Potter was up to something with Riddle. Next, she was determined to find out what.


	26. Chapter 26

Hey all, so I think I'm going to try to update once a week at least until I fishish this sucker. I am tentatively-- TENTATIVELY-- thinking of a sequel, because it would just be so cool because of how this story's going to end. Tentatively title: The Other Hermione.

Anyway, reviewers! Thanks Wistful-Stargazer, this chapter might be a bit hard for you to take. Syncopation: noted. I broke them up but unfortunately this system doesn't seem to accept double spacing. Hopefully these are broke up enough. Blindfaithoperadiva and Marisa1, thanks for sticking around to read this. OK, my battery's about to go, gotta post, sorry, more later. Ta,

V

The Come and Go Room

Hermione stared at the blue and silver ceiling of her dormitory room. It was impossible to meet Tom in the cave now, or in her room. Ravenclaw had been empty during the hols, but now it was full, and the Head Girl patrolled it whenever she wasn't on duty. She knew Tom had gone to London that night, probably for more muggle books that might indicate where the border to the Faer Land was, and what its nature might be. She hadn't been with him since they obliviated Alicia and Tom's Slytherin gang. She was glad for it.

There always seemed to be, with Tom, circumstances which led you to do unethical things out of necessity. She had done them, he had done them. What the question was, was the one the centaur philosopher had asked. Can time be changed? It wasn't, her third year with Harry. Everything had happened in just such a way that the future happened the way it had happened before, only they had been helping it happen before. Was she helping Voldemort happen? Would these necessary crimes always be there with Tom? Would they grow greater?

If she had no doubt, it would be easier to make the choice she had. In fact, it would be a compulsory act. She couldn't kill an innocent. But what if he wasn't? Then the safest way, the only way, was to let Dumbledore duplicate him and kill one of him in their time. Hermione shook her head. Could she honestly even go back anymore at all? How could she go back to Harry and Ron and her family and Hogwarts, after loving and killing Tom Riddle? How could she visit Grawp in his cave and pursue an appropriate career and tell absolutely no one of what had happened, keep this time to herself for the rest of her life?

It was utterly impossible. She was tied to him now with an unbreakable knot. She could not help giving in to every one of his looks and kisses; she was persuaded far too easily by his demands. It would be possible to oppose him, but only if her doubts were proved. Killing him would be impossible.

She turned under her covers, seeking comfort but not finding it. "It will be better when we go back," she whispered to herself fiercely. "It will stop when we get back."

.((0)).

The opportunity had blossomed out of nowhere and was impossible to resist. In his research for the Faer Land, Tom had come across tales of Merlin inventing the Sorcerer's Stone. One particularly old source that he'd stolen from an archive asserted that Launcelot made it. The semi-frequent appearance of the stone had provoked his old desire. If not the Grail, why not the Stone? There was the dependency, that was true, but it was a price worth paying. It hurt no one. It required no death. No one begrudged Nicholas Flamel of his use.

And then he had come across a notice in Diagon Alley of a talk given by Nicholas Flamel. "Is some Magic Really Science?" was the headline, and there was a moving caricature of the old man sitting next to his equally immortal wife. Tom had scoffed at the subject, but furrowed his brow. Nicholas Flamel, in London for two weeks to deliver his lectures at the Merlin Academy. Would he bring the stone?

Tom had gone to procure some books he had ordered at Borgin and Burke's. He'd gone to chat amiably with old Burke, to discuss rumors of certain things he had come to associate with the Faer Land. The hoof of a jakeling hare said to frequent the Wild, the skull of Iversson, the Makerly, a mallet that made unbreakable shields.

"What do you think of that?" said Burke, gesturing at Tom's newspaper, towards the folded caricature of Nicholas Flamel. The old magician blinked.

"It seems a muddy notion," said Tom quickly, and Burke laughed at his play on words. He assumed Tom to be a pureblood. He was Slytherin, after all. Tom had managed to squelch that rumor entirely in his fifth year. He still kept an ear out for talk about him. Everyone who he heard speaking about the matter of his blood, he dealt with. The rumor was dead, asphyxiated. It didn't tarnish his workings in this larger world. When he left Burke's shop the man had said if he wanted a position after graduation it was his for the taking.

When Tom stopped for a drink at the Leaky Cauldron that imbecilic barkeep with Tom's name (which always made him shudder), let it slip that Flamel was staying there. He'd be arriving the next evening. Tom couldn't help but glance up the stairs. Would he bring the stone? It would be so easy to steal it, if he brought it. He wouldn't even need it all. Just a piece. Tom thought of the picture of Flamel and his wife. If there was enough for two, certainly there was enough for three. Four, he thought, thinking of Mione. Tom had tipped the barman, and the idiot was pleased and entirely ignorant as to how he had earned the tip.

So here he was, a week later, on the night of Flamel's presentation. He had thought about the subject much in the next week. When he mentioned it to Mione, she had told him it was a notion that proved correct in certain cases. Most potions proved explainable under scientific terms, and worked on both muggles and wizards. A quarter of them could be brewed by muggles. Certain muggle scientists in Alexandria had turned lead into gold. A great deal of mathematics was axiomatic in the system of Arithmancy.

She had gone on for some time, citing things that had not yet been invented by muggles, but would be, impossible sounding things, clones and computers and space shuttles (a wizard had never been to the moon). There were geniuses. They were capable of, said Mione, their own peculiar magic. Tom had listened to her and thought how different she was of him, how accepting of that inferior world. She thought music and art equal to world-changing magic. She thought brute labor and tool-making were equivalent to magic, with its necessity for latent power and an entirely more subtle intellect.

Still, there were potions. Flamel was a Potions Master, the oldest one in the world. It was said that he had worked with Abraxas. When Tom revisited the Leaky Cauldron, under a masking spell, he had reconsidered his original position of ridicule. Some potions might just be science. Tom ascended the creaking stairs carefully, making a minimum of noise, which was hardly necessary since no one was present in the hallway. The upstairs corridor of rooms, too, was empty. Tom had listened in on the housecleaning staff's conversations three days before and deduced where the Flamels were staying. Room 26, on the first floor. He discovered it was on the right.

Tom knew the Leaky Cauldron was a more magically powerful place than its premises suggested. There were wards in place that had not been violated in a thousand years. It was the safehaven in times of battle, including now. Diagon Alley remained unaffected by the Blitz due to the Leaky Cauldron. The War was a different thing for wizards. The wizard's war had not yet come to England.

As he walked down the upper corridor, Tom ran his fingers against the walls, feeling for the main ward of the Leaky Cauldron. The ward required a magical key, and there was only one. Tom had simply slipped it off the barman's belt with a quick silencio and the movement of the child pickpocket he had once been. When he opened it there was another one waiting for, but that one didn't matter, since it would only alert the owner, who was too far away to reach his pub in time. He didn't need long, anyway. The Sorcerer's Stone had a locator spell inherent to it. It had been placed on it so that it wouldn't be monopolized. How many times had the Sorcerer's Stone been broken and stolen before? It took several moments for Tom, still masked under and invisibility glamour, to break through the remaining wards. He slipped through the door and into the Flamel's room.

The Flamels had imported with them a smell of ancient parchment. There were heaps of the stuff all over the room, and at least four bins for keeping scrolls. There were books shoved into crevasses everywhere, making improbable and temporary bookshelves. Looking into a mirror, Tom discovered to his satisfaction that he had perfected the invisibility glamour. Nary an outline was visible in the air.

He could practically feel the stone's presence in the room. He didn't even need the locator spell—truly didn't, he discovered, as he explored strange vibrations he could feel in the air, a ghost's breath of magic. His fingers were tingling. It was calling to him already, and he put his hand up to feel it better. Sensation abruptly disappeared from his fingertips. Still he put his hand forward, extending itself towards the drawer, and what he could feel inside of it.

The sorcerer's stone was next to a gun. Tom's hand found the gun first.

.((0)).

It had been very tempting to remove from Alicia's mind all memory of her relationship with Hermione. However, it proved to be impractical. There were all the notes that Hermione had scribbled over Alicia's work—and even with those aside, how to explain the extra knowledge Alicia had gained during their consultations. So it was no surprise when Alicia approached her after Arithmancy class and submitted her final paper for the class, asking for her approval. She had done all the experimentation that her thesis required.

"I'll have a look at this after classes," said Hermione. "I can have it back to you within a day or so."

"Actually, I was wondering if you could have a look at my experiments? I want to make sure they were set up properly. Transfiguration teaches a different model of experiments than arithmancy does, and I want to make sure the model I proposed is bias-proof."

Hermione bit her lip. After all, she'd never seen, in person, a model for both transfigurative and arithmantic experimentation—arithmancy with its stringent demands limited the very range of transfigurative experimentation open to combination. After all, she'd erased even the early knowledge Alicia had of her relationship with Tom, even that conversation with Adrian in which he'd asked Alicia to spy on Mione Potter for Tom. After all, it would be more suspicious to outright avoid Alicia than to assist as any staff of Hogwarts was expected to.

"Right. Where do you have the experiments?"

Alicia's pink eyes sparkled with intellectual pride. "That's the best part. The family house elf told me about this room at Hogwarts that meets all of your requirements. I finally found it when I started to work on my thesis, and when I went inside, it had exactly the books that I needed, and all of the instruments I needed appeared when I realized I needed them."

Hermione nodded and forced a neutral expression on her face. She tried not to betray any recognition of the room Alicia described. "All right," she said carefully. "Show me after dinner tomorrow." Why did accepting feel so reckless?

.((0)).

Hellobore was necessary for the potion and Tom had run out of it in his own stores, so the next evening found him sneaking into the Potions Closet. He used the invisibility glamour out of a practicing caution. So he was undetected when he came across Alicia sitting next to Adrian and Jean by the fireplace. Tom couldn't remember Alicia ever having been inside the Slytherin Dungeons. She was one of the few people of the other houses who would be allowed in, but she'd never exercised the privilege. Political, he'd thought then. But then, Alicia was a political little thing. That recently deceased connection to France. Tom had purloined one of Hermione's remarkable extendable ears, and was carrying it on him. There were spells that he could think of, to enable him to eavesdrop, but feeding the flesh-colored string into a corner of the room was simpler and more poetic.

"When are you meeting?" he heard Adrian say.

"After dinner," replied.

"So we should come to the door at half past seven?"

"Sounds like the right time to me," said Jean.

"Providing she's muggleborn," said Alicia.

"I feel it likely," said Jean. "More people would know her, could disprove that she was Mione Potter. The Malfoys know everybody; they make it their business to. Pendrake would have heard of her, he knows the purebloods of all the European Wizarding Institutions."

"And yet, Pendrake is unrepentantly prejudiced—he subscribes to that Grindelwald madness."

"And whose mouth are we feeding him into?" said Adrian.

Alica flicked the idea away with a turn of her wrist. "It's necessary. We're not changing the outcome of the war." She gave an abrupt little laugh. "And who cares if we do? But for it to work—I don't accept Pendrake's suspicions."

Tom listened for a long time after that. The talk devolved into petty gossip and talk of the upcoming NEWTS. Only once did they turn their discussion back to what it had been. Jude had been asking directions to the door of the room they were meeting at. Hearing them, Tom realized they were meeting at the Come and Go Room. Having heard all he needed, he wound in his flesh-colored extendable, and continued to the Potions Closet to revive his store of hellobore.

.((0)).

On their way to the Room of Requirements, Alicia told her about the family house elf, Mable, who had come to Hogwarts when she did, to look after her needs. As much as Hermione bristled at employing house elves with unpaid labor, Alicia spoke fondly of her house elf, who had told her a great deal about Hogwarts. Hermione waited as Alicia walked back and forth in front of the Room of Requirement three times. A door appeared, and Hermione followed Alicia inside.

She looked approvingly of the set-up. There was a bookshelf at one wall. The others were filled with charts and graphs detailing arithmantic probabilities and projections. Alicia's experiment was mean to show the range of possibilities in a standard transformation. A wizard could turn a teacup into a toad, but the toad didn't ever some out the same. Alicia's experiment would calculate the range of differences of a standard transfigurative spell, which might give them some information as to why it was that transfigurative spells differed for wizard to wizard. The main line of debate in the area was whether it was wands or wizards that made the difference.

Alicia talked her through the set-up on the table in the center of the room. You fed an arithmantic description of the spell through an arithmantic counter, and it would calculate the range of possible manifestations of the spell. "Even the kinds of transfiguration are limited. This counter can only calculate possible manifestations of inanimate change—I haven't figured out how to begin to deal with inanimate to animate conversions, or vice versa." She gestured at the counter. "Try it for yourself. Any inanimate transformation you can think of."

Hermione wrote a quick description of the spell she had used with Tom to transfigure earth into air. She fed it through the counter. Nothing happened.

"Hmm, that's odd," said Hermione. "Everything is as it should be. Why won't it work?"

"Because," said Alicia, her tone causing Hermione to look up, "my requirement was a room in which only purebloods can perform magic." Hermione's stomach dropped to the floor. The expression on Alicia's face was the same one that she had worn in the library. "So it seems Pendrake's suspicions were proven correct."

Alicia was standing straight and tall, looking at her as calmly as she'd looked at Tom when he obliviated her. Because she had known he would, and was prepared for it, and had even planned for it. She had gotten her memories back. "That Pensieve isn't in France, is it?" Hermione managed, backing away from the taller girl. Had they lost their memories purposely, in order to maneuver her into this position? She chanced a glance at the door. Were the Slytherin boys outside of it, waiting for her? She'd have to risk it. She couldn't stay in this room. If she could get out of the room, she could perform magic.

"Diffindo," Alicia intoned calmly, and a set of silvery ropes flew into the air. Hermione managed to dodge the spell, and the ropes disappeared where they lay. But she'd missed the door and it was opening. Hermione grabbed the edge of the door and swung it open with all her might. She looked up at Jean LeStrange, whose wand was leveled at her. A small, desperate sound escaped her as she attempted to lunge past him. If she could just make it over the threshold, just the threshold, she could use magic.

It was her last thought before she was hit with a silent spell that made her lose consciousness.

.((0)).

Tom looked from Mione's unconscious form on the floor of the Room of Requirement to the room's occupants. Mione's wand was clutched in her hand, but it wasn't pointed at anybody. "Didn't I tell you Riddle's whore was a Mudblood?" he said. They had started to bind her with silver rope when Pendrake closed the door and cut off Tom's view. With the sound of the shutting door, he understood what had happened. They could use magic, but she couldn't. Because she was a mudblood. And he was a half-blood, and would likely be just as useless, in that room. It was, he had to admit to himself, a bloody brilliant plan. Probably Alicia or Jean's. Neither he not Mione could fight, in that room. Had they anticipated his coming? Had that conversation he'd overheard been orchestrated for him, to lure him into the room? Did they just want Mione?

He had failed, the other night. He'd taken nothing from Alicia and the others. Somehow, they'd managed to get all of their memories back. Mione had warned him to be careful, had said something wasn't right. He couldn't think what it was. He had planned to go to France and steal the Silversmith Pensieve that very weekend—surely she couldn't have gotten to it that quickly?

Tom stood staring at the door, still visible to him once he had deduced what the room was, what requirement it met. He'd always thought himself superior due to his magic. If you took it away, what good was he? But—but. The purebloods were weak because of their prejudices. They avoided the Muggle world all they could. He bet they wouldn't even know a gun if it was pointed right at him.

Tom turned, and ran for the Slytherin Dungeons.

.((0)).

Mione blinked. Passing out was always so strange. One moment, you were entering an unbearable comfortable sleep, the next moment, you woke up with people staring at you. You never remembered where you were. The worst time had been the Basilisk. She'd woken up in an entirely different place and found out she had missed all her tests. Awful, losing that much time. It was why she didn't regret making up for all the lost time in third year. Mione blinked. On her wrists were the silver ropes of Diffindo. She was also bound to the chair by an emerald coil, a snake which ate its tail, no knots or way out of it.

"To your credit, we really had to look for this one," said Alicia, and Hermione fought an instinct to look up at them. "I think even you aren't familiar with it. You know, you might say that sometimes some of these boys have a lack of initiative, but when they get digging—and they have resources you don't. You could never get into the Alexandria Library. They take blood samples of everyone and use vampires to analyze the ancestry. Just one of the advantages to being pureblood." Alicia took a glass from Jean. "Here. Drink this. It'll make you feel better."

"I'm not going to make it easy for you to feed me Veritaserum," said Hermione.

"It speaks."

"Shut up, Malfoy." She gave the glass back to Jean. "No worries, Mione. It'll be as easy as pie." She took something else from Jean, something that caught the light and glittered. A syringe. Hermione knew in an intellectual way that syringes were bigger back in the 1940's, but she had never really considered the implications until now.

"I'll drink it," said Hermione.

"Funny, I thought you mugglish ones inured yourself to the pain."

"I'm not even sure you know what that's for."

Alicia laughed. "Oh, no. I know a bit about muggles. Everyone in France learned about muggles during the Mudblood Revolution. The boys couldn't believe what you muggles do with this. And stitches? They laughed themselves to bits." She took the glass again from Jean. "Here. Oh, drink up or I'll stab you with the damn thing!" Hermione reluctantly took a sip from the cup. She could feel the Veritaserum begin to work in her, and prayed that their questions wouldn't be penetrating.

She wasn't lucky. Alicia folded her arms, her wand pointed to the side, not even bothering to arm herself against Hermione. "Well, the first question is—who are you?"

Hermione actually tried to bite her lips together to keep from speaking. "My name is Hermione Granger."

"What are you, mudblood or halfblood?"

"Muggleborn."

"Ha!" that was Pendrake. Hermione shot him a foul look.

"Where are you from?" Alicia asked.

"Exeter."

"England?"

"Yes."

"Where did you go to school, then?"

"Hogwarts."

"I mean before."

"I went to school at Hogwarts."

Alicia frowned at her. "There's no way it's polyjuice potion. Explain yourself."

"I went to Hogwarts in—at a different time," Hermione managed.

Alicia looked at her for a long moment, and then looked at Jean. This obviously wasn't what they'd expected. Jean shrugged, and Alicia turned back to Hermione. "What did you come here for, then?"

"To kill Tom Riddle."

All four students stared at Hermione. No, not what they had expected at all. "What? Why?"

There was no way around the question. "To stop him—from killing more people."

"Are you talking about the Basilisk?"

"No."

"What people are you talking about?"

"My parents. My friends. My boyfriend." She managed not to say Harry. He wasn't dead yet, at least.

"But—when did he kill all these people?"

Tears, of frustration and fear and hopelessness, broke from her eyes, and she blinked them back fiercely as she answered. "In the future."

This pronouncement sat in silence for quite a long time. After some moments of contemplation, Alicia shook her head. "The future," she whispered to herself. Her head snapped up. "When? How far in the future?"

"Fifty years."

"Merlin, does Tom know?"

"Yes."

"Does he know what you're here for?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"Yes."

"What—and he knows?"

"Yes."

Alicia gave her a hard look. "That doesn't make sense. Sort yourself out."

"We'll kill him in the future. We'll leave one Tom back in time to grow up into Voldemort."

Alicia folded her arms and looked towards the ceiling. "And what will the other Tom do?"

"He'll come with me to the future."

"And one Tom will stay here and become—Voldemort?"

"Lord Voldemort. The Darkest Wizard of our age."

"The one who kills everyone you love."

"Yes."

"Why would you try to save him?"

"If we just kill him now there's no telling what will happen."

"Yes. They do say the future can't really be changed, don't they?" Alicia's eyebrows were knit together. "But maybe it just oughtn't change, and that means it can be changed." Jean stepped forward.

"What does this have to do with the other night? Why did you help Tom maintain control of us?"

"Because you're the first Death Eaters."

"And what, pray tell, is a Death Eater?"

"A servant of the Dark Lord."

"A servant?"

"Yes."

"How is that possible? Us, his servants?"

"I don't think you recognize him, when he recruits you under the guise of Lord Voldemort. He wants an anti-mudblood crusade, you want an anti-mudblood crusade."

"Is that what he wants? But he's a mudblood himself."

"What he wants is to rid the world of its non-magic counterpart. Muggles, mudbloods, squibs are all fair game. Remake the world into an entirely magical one. Allow everyone the power of resurrection, so everyone's immortal."

Jean looked gobsmacked. "That is a rather extraordinary idea. How does it fare?"

"Not well, the first time round. The second time's still a draw."

Pendrake has stepped forward, in between Alicia and Jean. "Do we survive it?"

"No. Only Alicia. You'll all be dead in ten years." Alicia let out an involuntary gasp. Hermione cursed herself for being so well-read. She was damning herself with the facts.

"And you want to let him live?" said Jean. "You're exchanging future lives for past lives, including his."

"You've already died. My people haven't."

"Tom isn't one of your people."

"He's innocent. Now. He can be saved."

"And us?" asked Alicia. "Weren't we innocent?"

Hermione looked coldly at her, glad of the Veritaserum for once. "No, you weren't. If I let you go, no matter what, you'll find a way to oppress and harm and sometimes kill innocent people and preserve the ridiculous pretense that some weird magical-pseudo-genetic law trumps a fluke of nature. If you want to avoid Tom Riddle and a sad end, find a way not to do harm. But if you do then I'll gladly curse you with fatal servitude to a half-blood."

Pendrake stepped forward, mumbling "Uppity" under his breath. Alicia restrained him with a light hand on his arm. "Do you know why my uncle died?" she said quietly.

"I don't know who your uncle is."

"Mione Potter doesn't know something," she mused. Then, avoiding looking in Hermione's direction, she told her: "Knauss."

"Monsieur Knauss."

"Do you know him?"

"He was talking to Dumbledore—he was a spy—Tom used Legilimency on him to find out what I was doing in Alsace. He didn't find me in Mr. Knauss's memories, but he left my face in his mind. Then—I don't know why—he came after me."

"You killed him."

"No—he attacked us, and we escaped!"

"We?"

"Me and Tom."

"You and Tom." Alicia said this bitterly. The door to the Room of Requirement burst open, prompting everyone to turn to the door with their wands extended. Tom was standing in the door frame with a gun in his hand.

He was very quickly by Jean's side, and plucked the wand from his hand while Jean stared at the gun. "Drop your wands or I shoot him." Jean was in between Tom and the others, forced to act as a shield. The others put their wands down slowly, only once they registered the manic glow in Tom's eyes. "Good. Now take that off of her," he said to Jean, pointing to Hermione. "Both of them."

"Go ahead and shoot me," said Jean, standing in front of Tom in either dubious confidence or a fit of madness. "I'd sooner be killed by a muggle barbarian than be ruled by him."

Tom cocked an eyebrow and the pistol, canted it towards Jean's head. "What do you think I this is? Do you think I won't shoot? Do you think I'll shoot you and let your friends heal you? Are those what you think the consequences are?"

"Consequences," spat Jean. "You spend entirely too much time questioning others about them."

"If you're trying to threaten me, it is poorly done."

"You don't know anything."

"Don't I? Haven't I found out about your little meeting?"

Jean smiled. "Arrogant. It doesn't occur to you that we meant for you to, does it? If you're so smart why don't you open the goddamn door?"

Tom gave a brief sigh, as though he was tiring of the argument, and with barely a flicker of his eyes he shot Jean in the chest. Jean, to his credit, looked shocked.

But then, as if the gunshot had summoned something, the door to the Room of Requirement was open again, and within seconds wizards filled the room. A good deal of them wore French military uniforms. Jean lay gasping on the floor; a man in a French uniform took him and carried him out of the room to heal him. Tom looked coldly around at the men in the room, who were in the process of closing in around Tom and Hermione, still tied magically to her chair. Past them, framed inside the door, was not a Hogwarts hallway, but the Foret Sacre.

"There wasn't just one requirement on the room. Mable told me you can have about five requirements on the room. You can use it strategically. It has been used strategically. Think of it: weapons, supplies, transport. You can't use it for food, for some reason, but that's what House Elves are for."

"Why are we in France?" Hermione asked.

"_Parce que nous apprendons Grindelwald, anglaise_," said Alicia.

Tom's eyebrows twitched, and Hermione saw him throwing a gauging glance in her direction. Then, wickedly, he smiled. Red flashed momentarily in his eyes. "Good," he said.


	27. Chapter 27

I'M AN IDIOT. I POSTED THE WRONG FILE 

Hey guys so, yeah, sorry about my French, I mixed up attendre and apprendre. My bad, yo no hablo French, you know? Anyways, here's the next chapter up. Not everything is dealt with by the end but most of it is. Svelte Rose thanks for the review. Alicia's kind of my attempt at a fairly sympathetic pureblood with prejudices. Wistful-Stargazer, blindfaithoperadiva, thanks for the input, and yes, Marisa1 and anyone else wondering, I am going to try really hard for the weekly update thing. So here's this week's installment!

.((0)).

The men did not move. They held their own guns up, Gatlin guns among them. Tom's pistol hung loosely by his side. Tom cocked his head. "Orders not to kill?" He raised his gun again and shot a man who was aiming point blank to the face. He shot him as quickly as he'd shot Jean. He shot off a stunning spell, as one of the military-uniformed agents shot his gun. The wizard missed his target completely, but the military agent's bullet hit Tom's throat, and a bright rose of color bloomed. Hermione's heart stopped. Tom staggered back, his grin a grimace in a face shocked with pain. But he stood, and was calm, and after a moment Hermione could hear that his breathing was normal, and she watched the blood staunch and then, weirdly, pull back into his skin. Tom felt the rapidly disappearing wound underneath his fingers. "I didn't know if that would work," he said, as if to himself. "Halfbloods can't perform magic here but the potions they've taken still work." He looked up. "I am immortal. You have no chance." Hermione suppressed a horrified gasp.

His announcement triggered another volley of bullets and spells, and Hermione winced. Alicia watched the fight intensely. She was standing near Hermione's chair and Hermione knew that she meant to prevent Tom from freeing her from her chair. Not that Tom could do such a thing until they were outside of the Room of Requirement and in the Foret Sacre. Immortal though he was, he still couldn't use magic. Another bullet hit Tom in his gun-arm. He could dodge the spells well enough, but bullets traveled too fast. That meant that Tom's weapon was also effective. Tom held up his arm and shot another wizard. A neat bullet-hole kissed the man's forehead and he dropped.

The only way for Tom to free her was to carry her bodily past the threshold, Hermione knew. And over the threshold was a French magical forest controlled by Grindelwald, in which he was at this very moment present. For Tom to free her and enable her to fight, they had to walk into their opponent's arms. It was a well-thought out little plan, Hermione reflected. Alicia probably only guarded her from Tom to buy more time. She wanted them to leave the Room of Requirement, but only when Grindelwald was close. Tom was immortal, but Grindelwald was the greatest dark wizard of his time, and there were rumors that he had an unbeatable wand. Hermione knew that Dumbledore himself had never dared to face him, that he had tried and failed saving one of his students from Grindelwald. If he was warned of Tom's immortality, he might still capture him. If he was warned of Tom's immortality, he would certainly mark the boy even if he escaped.

Jude and Malfoy had retreated into the forest. When Tom dispatched the last wizard, only Alicia and Adrian remained. Both held their wands up, shields extended from the tip. "Go ahead and waste your time with us," said Alicia. "I welcome the opportunity.

Tom glared at her and didn't answer. He could see they wouldn't risk their lives, that they would let him take Hermione, so he did, grunting as he picked up the chair she was doubly tied to and stepping over two sets of bodies on his way to the door. Hermione watched the blood-spattered room retreat from her view. Probably it was the gun, but the battles she had been in before now didn't seem half so brutal as the one she'd just helplessly witnessed. She'd never seen anyone shot before in her life.

When they crossed the threshold and entered the forest there was an explosion. Tom stood stock-still for a moment, thinking of mines and all the machines of the muggle war. There were sounds all around them, and when Hermione looked closer she could see camouflaged soldiers hiding among the trees. After a moment's thought, Tom made a blue platform for him to travel by and headed past the door, behind which was not an enclosure the size of the Room of Requirement, but the woods. All that existed of the Room of Requirement, or Hogwarts, was a door hanging an inch above the ground of the Foret Sacre. It was hard to hide while undoing the binding that held Hermione to her chair.

"I can't believe they let you keep your wand," muttered Tom, vanishing the silver rope that tied her limbs together and scrutinizing the snake. He hissed at it. The only other time she'd heard him use Parseltongue was in the chamber of secrets. But the Ouroboros around her unclasped its jaws from its tail and promptly vanished in a puff of smoke. "It's Nagafinitus," he told her. "To take it off."

"What stops bullets?" asked Hermione.

"Endinius. I'm surprised you don't know."

"Ours was not a bullet war." Dual cracks alerted them to the fact that bullets had to be accounted for, and there was a supplemental volley of spells directed at them, but they were already on the forest floor and moving by then. Hermione outlined a standard figure in the limited space and whispered "Endinius."

Tom was already standing; his spell had been silent. There was another explosion that shook their feet and was large enough to blister Tom's hand. Hermione stared at it, but it didn't heal. Tom caught her looking. He ducked involuntarily at a gunshot report and ducked behind a tree as a volley of red light set his former shelter on fire. "Innocuous wounds heal regularly," he said. "I can get colds, headaches." He aimed past the tree with his gun and shot a soldier sheltered in a nearby tree. The more Hermione looked the more soldiers she could see.

Tom raised his arm and brought it down in a great slash, a whistle parting the air during its passage. Half a dozen or more bodies fell under the Petrificus Totalus. There was significant movement in response to this. Hermione noted this and disarmed soldiers selectively while Tom brought his wand down in that slashing, powerful spell. Hermione turned.

They had moved out towards the north side of the door to the Room of Requirement, the side they had come out from. There was, at some distance, another explosion.

They turned, Hermione first, and saw an enormous figure on the hill, big as a small tree. Before she had a chance to register his form, something in her wand pulled, or she sent, and some message of defense was transmitted. The Tenebro spell arced from her wand, and hung its blue bubble over them in a protective cowl. An enormous burst of red light struck the bubble as it solidified, and Hermione recoiled. Tom was looking through the shield at their opponent. "Grindelwald," he breathed.

"I told you that spell comes in handy in some situations," said Hermione, a bit weakly.

He grinned at the looming figure, coming faster by the moment. "You just blocked a spell from Grindelwald."

"I know," She said in an astonished way. "I'm amazing, aren't I?"

He laughed. "Yeah. We're certain to get through this."

No more spells came, other than the one. Instead, the figure advanced steadily and quickly towards them, growing bigger as he drew closer. Hermione was suddenly very sure that the spell Grindelwald had used had been a test. He was nearly there, was he going to—try to physically move past the shield? Surely not. But he watched Hermione and put his hands against the skin of the bubble and braced his legs against the ground and then pushed, with an incredible, inhuman force.

"What's he playing at?" said Tom. Hermione looked behind her.

"He's pushing us back!" she exclaimed. He was using brute force to push them back over the threshold of the Room of Requirement, into the territory in which they were incapable of magic. "Quick, Tom, push against the left side." She put her own hands against the skin of the shield and pushed futilely against Grindelwald's unnatural thrust, which inched them steadily closer and closer towards and into the Room of Requirement. She tried to magically root it into the ground, tried to extend the boundary, but the shield just tore up earth as Grindelwald pushed. Was he part Giant? No, it had been engorging spells, Hermione remembered. What was this strength from? It wasn't physically possible. The traction of his feet on the ground versus that of the shield embedded in a few inches of dirt made it impossible. Yet he did it. He pushed them, resolutely, inevitably, back into the Room of Requirement. At the last minute Hermione tried to break the spell, but Grindelwald had solidified their shield. It remained only outside the Room of Requirement, trapping them in it. He followed the shield in and closed the door behind him.

Grindelwald was wearing a bulky leather mask and his hair streamed greased and matted behind him. He was wearing an apron. It was black so it couldn't show blood. He smelled, primarily, of dirt and dog. Tom was fingering the gun in his waistband. Hermione hoped he was a quick draw. She idly wondered how he had learned to shoot like that while she stared at Grindelwald and the cold, shrewd look Tom was giving him.

"Even if you shoot me, I won't kill you. First I'll rip out your eyeballs and feed them to your girlfriend."

"Cooked or raw?" asked Tom with a smile.

The giant, ripe-smelling wizard cocked his head down at Tom and heaved towards him. Tom didn't show the slightest fear, but Grindelwald picked him up anyway. He disengaged him of his gun, quickly, and restrained his hands in a magical bond. Then he picked him up and stuck a finger into his mouth and split his cheek with a ragged fingernail, eliciting an involuntary gasp from Tom. Blood dribbled dangerously out of his cheek, but he just watched Grindelwald.

"You're so afraid of me you won't challenge me on an even playing field," said Tom, his split cheek slurring his words.

Grindelwald hit Tom so hard with his hand that Hermione heard a bone break. She jumped towards them, and Grindelwald backhanded her back into the wall. "Damn you for being right! Get up, we'll go out to finish this." He dragged Tom up by his collar, disconnecting it from his shirt, and Tom leered, white and half-covered in his own blood. Grindelwald flicked his wand behind him, just for a moment, and suddenly Hermione found herself inside of the self-devouring Ourobouros. There was nothing she could do, here, but they were headed outside. The door didn't shut behind him. Grindelwald was too taken up with Tom to bother with Hermione. He hadn't bound her legs. The only reasonable thing to do was get outside and take the spell off herself.

It was painful. Her practice sessions with the Cruciatus kept her from crying out at it. It took longer than it normally did to finite a spell, and she had to concentrate her wand on the snake for half a minute while it achieved the desired effect. By the time she'd gotten free, Tom was screaming.

Hermione restrained herself from simply running toward the noise. She would do no good with heedlessness. She looked towards the trees. There was a clearing past them which Hermione could just make out, and shapes which became clearer as she moved through the Forest. Red became more prominent as she grew nearer, but Hermione silenced her footsteps with a spell and moved carefully to avoid being sighted. When she saw what had happened she was nearly sick.

Grindelwald had torn Tom's arm off at the socket. His wand arm. He was waving his wand arm through the air. Tom extended his remaining hand, his right hand. He made no bodily move except that, didn't rise from his knees or try to grab his disembodied arm. He extended his hand and summoned his own wand without one. Grindelwald cackled. Tom aimed his wand and shot a spell towards Grindelwald which he easily blocked. Tom was stark white and looked woozy from the loss of blood.

Behind the trees, Hermione aimed her own wand. "Confundus," she said in a low voice. It hit Grindelwald in the neck, the only exposed part of his body. He stiffened immediately and glanced in her general, if not specific, direction. He aimed his wand and a light immediately issued from it, but landed ten meters away. Her spell had worked. She aimed and shot the same spell at him again. He lumbered forward, almost avoiding it. Then he shook his head in a movement weirdly reminiscent of Hagrid, and made for the woods. Hermione saw Tom take his severed arm and put it against his shoulder. He winced as he aimed his wand at it. She could see an impossible recombination begin, and wondered how much of its success was due to the Sorcerer's Stone. Grindelwald was heading the wrong direction in the woods, but he wasn't too far off, and he was pointing his wand at his head, starting to finite the spell. But Tom was standing up, and pointing his wand at Grindelwald. "Sectumsempra!" he shouted, words still blurred by his unhealed cheek.

Hermione was fairly sure that Grindelwald was covered in dragon hide, but Tom's spell managed to split the skin—Hermione could hear the ripping sound. When Grindelwald turned back to Tom, Hermione could see that he was bleeding under the torn hide. Grindelwald made a small motion with his wand hand, more a motion of the hand than the wand. Tom, his re-attached arm dangling loosely and his wand in his right hand, was dragged over towards Grindelwald. His heels dug into the ground until he was overbalanced by the spell, and was dragged into Grindelwald's hands.

"Come out or he dies," he said to the woods, not half as confounded as he had been.

Tom was aiming his wand at Grindelwald, but the spell he muttered was immediately deflected, and Grindelwald blew the wand out of his hand with his own spell. Hermione saw a window of opportunity open and crashed noisily through the woods as Tom attempted to disengage himself from Grindelwald's grasp. Grindelwald was not so distracted that Tom was able to detach himself. He held onto him by his wounded arm, and Tom groaned with pain. Grindelwald sneered and pointed his wand at Tom. He screamed. The Cruciatus. As soon as it had done its work Hermione saw Grindelwald's wand arc upwards in her direction. Not content to rely on her constant shielding spell, she deflected the oncoming spell and aimed a disarming spell at Grindelwald. She was amazed to see his wand slip out of his grasp. Grindelwald had to reattach his grip and in the process lost his grip on Tom. Angered, he turned to the escaping wizard and sent another Cruciatus at him. It reached Tom as soon as Tom had reached his wand. He was used to the Cruciatus now; now he only gasped with pain. But Grindelwald did not move his wand, and Hermione could see that the spell was an extended one, and as the light grew brighter she knew the pain increased. A strained sob escaped from Tom; he was still trying to grab his wand, and fresh blood was escaping from his split cheek. Hermione aimed another disarming spell at Grindelwald. His wand jerked in his hand but remained, and the spell remained unbroken. The light grew brighter, Tom screamed, and Grindelwald extended a hand, palm-up, in Hermione's direction. She could feel a force pulling her towards him and attempted to grab a tree branch, but it was wrenched out of her grip by the force of the spell. She was dragged through brambles and past trees, and tried to find a purchase to keep her swift progress into Grindelwald's grip. She could see him watching her, his wand still trained on Tom, who was gasping and moaning, his eyes wide and unfocused.

"Who are you?" asked Grindelwald brusquely.

It was lucky the Veritaserum had by then worn off. "Mione Potter," said Hermione quickly.

"Why are you trying to save him?"

Hermione shook her head in incomprehension.

"Are you with him? Are you both Dumbledore's pawns?"

"What?" Hermione breathed. To her right, Tom stuttered and gasped, and finally managed to grab his wand.

"I know he's using him," said Grindelwald, jerking a thumb in Tom's direction without looking at him. She couldn't help but marvel at Grindelwald's ability to converse while holding a spell for that length, to perform two spells at once. "She says you're connected."

"Who?" Hermione still didn't understand.

"Silence," said Grindelwald, and her lips closed shut with a prickle at the seam. She reached up involuntarily to feel her mouth and he physically plucked the wand out of her hand and used it to set the snake on her, tied around her in a complicated, self-devouring knot for the third time that evening. He looked at Tom, finally, and found himself facing the tip of Tom's wand. Tom's face was screwed up in pain and concentration, and he said, raggedly, "Avada Kedaveda."

Grindelwald blocked the spell without turning from Hermione. He picked her up and dangled her a foot in the air. Hermione could see Tom sprawled on the forest floor, his bad arm pinned under him and his wand in his right hand, pointed at Grindelwald. "Talk or I kill her," he said.

Tom spoke but didn't let go of his wand. "What do you want to know?"

"Are you the one, Dumbledore's pet, his new star pupil?"

"What—no."

"Crucio." His wand was turned on Hermione as he said it. She bit down on a scream and she saw Tom lower his wand.

"Stop. What do you want me to say? I'll say it," said Tom.

"She's quiet," said Grindelwald, observing Hermione. "Most people scream when I do that." He turned to Tom. "He said _he_ was almost ready. Are you ready for me yet?"

Tom shook his head. "I—I what?"

"You are Dumbledore's protégé. I can smell it on you."

Tom stared at Grindelwald for a moment, face pale and bloodied and his breath ragged. Then he began to laugh weakly. Blood poured openly from his cheek. "Yes," he nearly gasped as he struggled with only partial success to stand. "My favorite Hogwarts professor, Dumbledore!" He laughed again, nearly hysterical. His eyes flashed red and Hermione remembered that Grindelwald had likely not yet been informed about the Sorcerer's Stone.

Grindelwald started to mumble a spell, wand still at Hermione's throat, when his wand was suddenly blasted out of his hand. He put out his hand and called the wand back to him effortlessly, and turned to Tom. "Then you are ready. Avada—"

"Kedaveda," finished Tom at the same time. The two green lights met each other at exactly the halfway point between Tom and Grindelwald. They smoldered when they met, throwing off spurts of light that grew white as they flamed to the ground. Grindelwald was still holding Hermione.

She knew she was witnessing Priori Incantatem, but she wasn't sure how it was possible. Did Grindelwald have a holly and phoenix feather wand, too? Or did his unbeatable wand have the ability to react this way with Tom's wand? She could see the crooked stick in the enormous wizard's hand. It looked nothing like Tom's wand. The spot where the lengths of light met was creeping closer and closer to Tom. His eyes met Hermione's over the arc of green light, and he winked.

In quick succession, Tom pulled his wand out of the spell, breaking it, extinguishing his wand, while Grindelwald's spell went forward and hit Tom squarely on the chest. He toppled forward on already bent legs and lay down on his side on the forest floor. He still had his wand clutched in his hand. Hermione didn't react.

Grindelwald, still carrying her, moved over to Tom's body and inspected it with the tip of a giant leather boot. "Was it him, quiet little girl?"

"Yes," said Hermione, staring at Tom, his still chest, his unflickering eyes. "Yes, I think it is him."

"You were helping him?"

"I suppose I was." Oh, thought Hermione. He wasn't going to stir, wasn't going to rouse himself at all. His wand was already pointed up towards Grindelwald, inclined upwards over a pebble. She watched for a sign, but there was none. Grindelwald moved closer, put a hand over Tom's mouth, and out of the corner of her eye Hermione noted the position of the wand.

"I don't think I'll kill you yet," he said to Hermione. Grindelwald prodded Tom's lifeless face. "You'll wish I had." He stood. Hermione looked back as he turned, at Tom, but still there was nothing she could see. But then Grindelwald was falling, and Hermione, tangled in the snake, fell with him. By the time she hit the ground, the snake no longer twined around her, because Grindelwald was dead.

Playing dead. It was the ultimate feint, and Hermione knew Tom couldn't resist it. Tom, already kneeling, lay down and groaned. He looked like he might as well be dead. Hermione sighed, and stood, and walked over to Tom. She sat next to him on the ground and waved her wand over his face. "Episky," she said.

"Thank you," said Tom. "I need help with my arm."

"Why didn't the Stone heal that? It's a killing wound."

"Maybe in this case it wasn't. Without the stone, I'd be dead." His cheek was half-healed. Hermione cast the spell three times before it was fully healed.

"Let's see your arm."

Tom started to undo the buttons on his shirt with his right hand, slowly. Hermione batted his hand away and waved her wand. "Exclaspo," she said. Every button on Tom's shirt unbuttoned as if synchronized.

"Where did you learn that?"

"In a book. I've never tried it, until now." Hermione drew in her breath as she saw Tom's arm. It was purple up to the shoulder, and a thick black line separated the top from the bottom. Below the line it went from purple to grey. Blood had stopped circulating in his arm. "Absolutely brutal," she whispered. She held up her wand to examine the connection Tom had remade. The nerves and muscles were wrong, hastily squashed towards each other and pushed out of place by neighborly veins and ligature. Hermione concentrated. She fixed the bone in place at his shoulder, and mended the bone together again. Tom winced. She pivoted her wand in an intricate design and said, "Kairos." The ligaments bound themselves together, veins and muscles reconnected. She resanguinated his arm. The black band of blood still circled his upper arm. She placed her hand on his still gray arm; it was cold and clammy. She massaged it until pink started to appear underneath the gray.

"Thank you," said Tom. "I couldn't have done that half as well."

Hermione didn't say anything for a long moment. Then she whispered, "You killed Grindelwald. You."

"Yes." He stared intently at the spot of the ground where Grindelwald lay. "And no one will ever know who did it."

"No," she agreed. "They won't." She knew that fact very well from the recorded history of it.

He looked at her and she backed away. "Are you afraid of me now?" His voice was half taunting.

"What if I am? Tom—that! You shot Jean and he would have died. You shot those men." She shook her head as she stared at him. "My God, Tom. You're immortal." She made herself say it. "Did you kill your father?"

He laughed. "The sorcerer's stone. You see, you can be immortal without doing anything wrong. If we're immortal, we'll have a long time to find the Gates to the Faer Land."

"What? Me, the sorcerer's stone—what about Phineas Nigellus?"

Tom cupped his hand affectionately around her ear. "Clever. How do you know about him?"

Hermione ignored his question. "So he's to die now?"

Tom shook his head. "I only took a chunk. That's all you need. It's enough for both of us."

"I won't take it."

Tom laughed. "Why in the world not?" He leaned forwards suddenly and kissed her. Hermione's mouth broke open with surprise and she was suddenly flooded with a warm, gingery taste as Tom explored the circuit of her teeth. She was being pulled forwards by the lightest touch of his hand, and the taste of ginger had a metal undertone to it.

She pulled back from Tom. "That's it? That's from the stone, isn't it?"

"I brewed it yesterday, as an experiment. I was going to take it to Slughorn to see how well I'd done it. But when I realized what they'd done I decided to take it. That and my gun."

The red in his eyes again. Hermione leaned weakly against him. "Oh good Merlin. Did this all happen already? Is this what happened?" Her eyes searched a corner of her mind. "It's the same date. The exact same date that I remember." But facts were different. His father was still alive. He wasn't living off of the Grail. However, his father wasn't supposed to die yet, not until springtime. Still, it wasn't the Grail. He hadn't killed to gain more life. It didn't change the nature of what had just happened, didn't change the fact that he had just killed several people, didn't make it any less of a bloodbath.

"You try to be good," said Tom. "Then the world interferes."

Hermione looked at him, his face relaxed, elated, pride reflected by the red ink in his eyes. "Do you try?" she whispered. It was now. Now she was on the precipice and she truly had to decide whether to go forwards with her and Tom's plan or to go back to her original one for safety's sake. There was a wildness in Tom's eyes right now. Hermione could see clearly that he wasn't sorry for what he'd done.

"I didn't for a long time, and I don't always, but when I do, it's because of you." His hand circled around her waist and she forced herself to look into his eyes, and please let her see the answer, was it starting, was the human part of him escaping? Or had it been the circumstance—no, Hermione knew the circumstance, and it did not excuse the laughter that came from him now as he leaned closer and kissed her again, more deeply, his eyes open and hers watching his. "Why not live, Mione? Live as long as you like. What's wrong with that?" Up close, the red lights in his eyes were the color of blood, and they watched her with a half-lidded stare.

He had just killed one of history's great dark wizards. He was laughing, and couldn't contain his laughter, and fate seemed written on his brow. If Harry was here instead of her, he wouldn't hesitate, he would bring Tom to be killed, he would kill him himself.

It wasn't that she hesitated. It was that she couldn't do it at all.


	28. Chapter 28

I know this is out of left field, but movie review time! I just saw Lust, Caution, which I have been literally dying to see, and I'm not joking, I went to great lengths to find this movie, which is not particularly available where I am. And maybe it's just because I'm in love with Tony Leung, but omg so effing good (but also falling in love with the Taiwanese guy who played Wang). And since it's kind of a similar genre, (in fact, the exact same kind of set up in half the T/Hr stories out there), I thought I'd put it out there. If you've seen it, just think: Mr Yee is Tom Riddle, Wang is Harry+Ron, Mrs. Mak is Hermione. And it did sort of propel me to write this chappie, so… check it out.

Oh, yeah, and sorry about the mis-posted chapter. Dunno if you all caught it, but I accidentally posted the chapter I was in the middle of writing instead of the next chapter. So if you were confused, go back to the last chapter.

Reviewers: OceanReflection—this fic takes a bit of license with the last two books, because I started to write it after The Order of the Phoenix. So I'll incorporate things like Slughorn (very minimally) or the unbeatable wand (you're right; Tom doesn't know about that and won't get it), but some things contradict my story. So here, there's no horcruxes, just the Grail. Grindelwald's a lot different, too, and you have no idea how much the Dumbledore/Grindelwald pairing makes me want to write a fanfic. Marisa1, I love your long reviews to death. I'm so glad that Tom and Hermione as a couple works, because usually the only interesting part of romances is the build-up of tensions. Maybe they've got kind of a Nick and Nora thing going on. The red eyes? Well, Tom's not exactly a pure soul, and it's kind of a reflection of when he breaks certain boundaries; right after the fight between Voldemort and Hermione he might not have crossed the boundaries he is now, but he has this desperate need to control situations and leave an impression. Oh, and yes, both Alicia and Dumbledore fed Grindelwald information on Tom, for opposite reasons. More on that at the end of this chappie. Blindfaithoperadiva, you wrote I think after my mis-posted chapter, so if you haven't already, check out the last chapter before this one. Phlegm183—you there?

.((0)).

Tom sat while Hermione, kneeling, finished magically repairing his injuries. The bone of his arm was still attached but there was still pain in the flesh part of his wound. His cheekbone had been broken, also easily remedied, bones being natural conduits of magic. His cheek was smooth and unscarred, but the left corner of his lip tilted upwards, giving him a permanent sneer.

"Did you used to want to be a Mediwitch?"

"I was planning to start there. I wanted to conduct a few studies there on magical creatures given subpar legal status and then move on to diplomacy. Then I was going to lobby until werewolves and vampires and goblins had equal rights and the house elves were liberated."

"You want to liberate the house-elves?" asked Tom.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Yes, I did. Do."

"They're ten times as powerful as any magician. Do you have any idea what that would mean?"

"We're a million times more magically powerful than muggles, but we don't enslave ourselves to them."

Tom was giving her a shrewd look. "If we opened the Gates to the Faer Land it might not be that way. They couldn't uphold the Statute of Secrecy if that happened, and the magical creatures would have a refuge."

Hermione snorted. "It would make a better sales pitch if you sounded like you half-believed in it. Finding the Gates is one thing, but opening them? Am I to believe you care so much about giving oppressed magical populations refuge that you'll start Slytherin's campaign again?"

"Well, no, not really. But since you do, I thought it would be appropriate to point out the advantages of looking for the Faer Land."

Hermione shook her head and smiled to herself. "Of course." Tom, as healed as possible now, stood up and brushed off the dirt from his robes. He put out a hand and helped Hermione to her feet. "What will we do about Alicia and the others?" she asked.

"First we have to find them."

"Good. I know about two hundred locating spells," she replied.

Tom raised his eyebrows but said nothing. They walked back to the clearing where the door to the Room of Requirement was. The door was still open and the room was still there. "I think if they had gone already, it would have disappeared," said Hermione.

"Probably," Tom agreed. "I think I saw them go left, Alicia and Adrian. Gabriel took Jean towards the left, too."

"Who's Gabriel?" asked Hermione, following Tom as he investigated a path towards the missing students.

"Jean's brother. The one who took him out after I shot him."

"Oh? He works for Grindelwald, then?"

"He was probably the key to their plan."

Hermione's wand flickered into a reconstructed point me compass. It located particular conglomerates of images instead of the cardinal directions. She encoded it with a sequence of images designating both Adrian and Alicia, who were probably closer that Jean and the rest. The magical compass needle waved in the air for a moment before pointing in a direction diagonal to them. "This way," she said, marking out a path a few feet ahead that verged in that direction.

Tom turned and looked at the compass needle for a moment, placidly floating before Hermione. "A compass spell?"

"Yes," said Hermione. She had reconstructed the spell during Harry's disappearance. It had not found the black hair and green eyes and glasses that belonged to Harry, but it had found Adrian's configuration of dark features and was pointing towards him. "It's found Adrian. No idea where Alicia is, though."

"Perhaps she's with the others."

"Why wouldn't Adrian be with them?"

"He probably means to slow us down." He directed his wand to his feet and muttered "Silencio." Hermione followed suit. Without their own feet crunching the dried leaves, the sounds of the forest grew more acute, and after a hundred feet of walking in the compass point's direction, she heard someone walking. Through the trees, a dark set of Hogwarts robes was visible. "It's him," said Tom grimly, pointed his wand, and said, "Petrificus Totalus."

The figure fell. Tom and Hermione walked towards him. He had crumpled forwards to the ground, and his face was hidden under a cap of dark hair, but when Tom turned him over it was Adrian's face.

Tom pointed his wand at the boy. "Legilimens."

Hermione watched his expression shift as he perused the contents of the boy's mind. Tom turned to her after a moment. "She went to watch Grindelwald kill me. She's probably already through the door." He swished his wand in an impatient sort of way. "Levicorpus."

Hermione frowned at the trees surrounding them. "Should we split up? I'm more familiar with this forest—I visited it once before." She didn't mention that she had visited it with her parents.

Tom shook his head. "What will she do? Go to Dippet? He'd likely award me if he found out what happened here today."

"For shooting Jean or killing Grindelwald?" Hermione asked.

Tom gave her a half-amused look. "The ones left here have an opportunity to seek sanctuary. I expect we can locate and deal with them before Alicia has the presence of mind to flee Hogwarts."

"Alicia is the most dangerous one."

Tom was silent for a moment. "I know. I should have listened to you." He sighed. "Do you want to go after her?"

Hermione thought, and then tapped on her wand. "Let's just see where the others are first." She swished her wand and carried out the series of complicated little maneuvers that encoded the spell with the boys' features. She looked at Tom as the compass pointed, its direction completely clear. "All four of them are together. You shouldn't go alone."

Tom smiled, higher towards the left than the right. "Protecting me?"

A strange notion, really. "Maybe I shouldn't." Hermione was only half-joking.

Tom pulled her into an abrupt kiss. Then he bookended her face with his palms and smiled. "Let's hurry," he said. He cocked an eyebrow, pointed his wand at his feet, and said, "Locomotor."

Tom moved backwards away from her, his feet still, but floating a foot of the ground and quickly floating him towards the Slytherin boys. Hermione hastily set herself on speed and followed Tom. He had the general direction, but the specific one was floating in front of her.

Tom hurtled through the trees, casting glances behind him to check if Hermione was still behind him, and occasionally propelling to a slightly faster speed. Within minutes they had reached a clearing near a small cliff. No one seemed to be present. Hermione looked at her compass. It was indicating a slight hill obscured by a grove of trees—Golden eiderdown trees, perpetually autumn-colored and necessary to Felix Felicitus. They walked towards the area indicated by Hermione's compass spell.

"A tunnel?" Hermione asked. Hadn't they been more prevalent in World War 1? But, as Tom moved his wand in a complicated revealing spell, she could see the way it was meant to be opened, which would have been possible to find if it had only had a muggle disguise. It also had glamours on it, which Tom finited one after the other. When he was finished, they were able to make out the dim line of the entrance, visible only upon close inspection. If they hadn't been looking for it they would never have found it.

Hermione and Tom exchanged a look. This wasn't like Adrian. They would be confronting four or more armed wizards in close quarters. Hermione nodded. They entered.

There was only a low-ceilinged, narrow passage in front of them. It veered sharply towards the right, so that whatever lay down it was beyond their view. They cautiously walked down it, and at the tunnel's corner Tom took a mirror out of his pocket and levitated it so he could see if anything, or anyone, lay around the corner. Nothing did; it just veered sharply around again. Hermione followed him around another corner, and another, and she was reminded of the Founder's section in the library. They seemed to be spiraling inward. At a certain point, they began to hear the indistinct sound of voices.

Pendrake's voice was audible. "… wish I was there to see the mudbloods suffer."

Beyond the next corner, finally, was the room in which all four boys were. Tom and Hermione entered. "I'll thank you to refer to me as half-blood. Not the same thing as mudblood at all, really." Immediately, all the boys were standing with their wands extended, except for Jean, who seemed to have healed, but was crouching on the floor, his wand weakly held aloft.

Before anything could happen Hermione heard Tom's wand slice through the air. An enormous burst of light issued from it, and all of the boys except for Jean toppled to the floor; Jean had been saved by his low position.

"Did you kill him?" he gasped, clutching at the spot where the bullet had entered.

"Yes," Tom replied coldly.

Jean nodded, his eyes intent, but not on anything in the room. "Do it, then. Do what you must."

The wand sliced through the air again.

It wasn't hard, this time. There was no finesse required. Tom simply ripped himself out of their heads entirely, along with all that those memories entailed. All they were left with was a picture of a black-haired boy who had sat in their classes, or slept in their dormitories, and a name which constantly hovered at the tip of their tongue. Then Tom set five different Imperiuses on them to doctor their behavior into the form that was necessary for him to go into the future that Hermione remembered. Hermione watched, but refused to help him. She thought again of the realization she'd had in the morning a few days ago.

.((0)).

Alicia knew her way around the Hogwarts library almost as well as Hermione and Tom did. She had her own little private nooks that no one knew about. As obscure as this one was, smuggled in between dragon lore and pyrothaumaturgy, she hadn't come here to hide. She knew it was over. She had seen Tom kill Grindelwald. She had seen Tom, after being tortured, having his arm ripped off, having been the subject of a dozen or so Cruciatuses and the killing curse, defeat the greatest dark lord of the age, and with it, La Fraternite du Sangue.

She pulled out the book titled The Dragons of Romania, and dug a quill out of her pocket. This was the last thing she could think of, the last straw she could grasp at. She began to write.

"I know I won't get my memories back this time. I know they'll be watching me. I know it can't be me, anymore. So now I pass the duty on to someone else. I bid you, reader, if Tom Riddle still lives, he must be killed. If Hogwarts starts to change, if there are snakes and secret places opening up, if people start to die, look for him. See if he is there. Perhaps he is not Tom Riddle anymore. Whatever name he takes, he must not live." Alicia couldn't put it into words anymore, all the betrayals, the mental thefts. In a corner of the page, she added, "Mione Potter--" and then there were footsteps, so she dog-eared the page and put it back into the stacks, and then walked away from it, towards the footsteps, and revealed herself to the devil himself.

She knew it must be him, and cast a spell before even looking at him. "Cruciatus!" she cried. She turned to see it hit Tom and blow him off his feet. A strangled sort of cry escaped him, but he had suffered enough pain that day to be at least a little used to it.

Tom raised his own wand before he even attempted to get to his feet, and his spell was in the air before his wand could complete its upward arc. A set of silvery ropes hurtled in the air towards her.

"Protago!"

"Confundus!"

"Avada Kedavada!" she screamed, and saw him silently block the spell. Even though she knew it was over, had known in the Foret Sacre when she saw Grindelwald's body, she struggled to block Tom's spells, tried to hit him before he could hit her, and tears of frustration streamed from her pink eyes as he wand arced and descended in her last desperate attempt to keep the future from being written in stone.

"Avada Kedavada!" she shrieked again, and again, when she wasn't blocking Tom's spells with her own wand. It was the only way, the only escape for her, the only way to keep Adrian from dying. She knew Tom was immortal, but no other spell could stop him. It was a fruitless effot, but so was any other spell. Briefly she wondered why he didn't kill her now.

She could see Tom moving his wand, silently countermanding the fatal spell, could see the beginnings of a new spell, and cast a protego in anticipation. Light arced from his wand, and Alicia blocked it, and as the two spells impacted, Tom whispered "Petrificus Totalus!". Alicia had thought he would catch her with a silent spell, but his feint had disarmed her, and her wand dropped from her frozen grasp when she fell.

Tom took more time with her than the boys.

.((0)).

A man with a long beard and spangled robes appeared with a faint popping noise in the middle of the Foret Sacre. There was no one to observe him or his apparition, so there will always remain the conundrum of whether or not he made a sound. History remains silent on the subject.

Luckily, this is not a historical text, since none ever recorded Dumbledore's progess through the enchanted French Forest in the aftermath of Grindelwald's demise. No one except Dumbledore knew he had died for nearly a week; none of his underlings thought it was possible for him to be defeated, and as a consequence his body was discovered when it was ripening with decay. Muggles would not notice the end of Grindelwald's life, but within a year the Allies would make a decisive turnaround and put an end to the European war; there would only be Asia left for the Muggle's War to End All Wars.

Dumbledore did nothing for Grindelwald's body, bury it, incinerate it, or report it. He was merely looking for the body his letter to himself had told him about. When he found it, he smiled. The letter had been right, quite right. But then, his own long-standing interest—obsession, really, with the vicissitudes of time had made him ready to accept everything—the girl, the letter, the unexpected boon of destined success.

As the old man walked away, he muttered to himself: "I knew you had it in you, Tom."

There was no one around to hear him.

.((0)).

"History remains silent on the subject"—I feel like it's a Terry Pratchett line, dunno if I stole it or not.


	29. Chapter 29

So I'm going away for the weekend and won't be able to update with my usual lengthy chapter, so here's an early ficlet to tide you over until next week's installment, which is very likely to include a preview of the sequel to this fic, "The Other Hermione".

Waterytart: glad you found the fic. I have posted in threads at Schnoogle that I'm still posting chapters here, but I'm afraid I have some readers on Schnoogle that may never find the rest of the chapters here, because I will never be willing to go through the headache of posting another chapter on that site. Marisa1: Who will find Alicia's note? That is the question. I was totally debating about Ron for a while, I mean it would make sense for him to be researching dragon lore because of Charlie, right? BTW, for a great Ron, read Slytherincess's stuff. I know there are a lot of Ron haters out there, and to be honest I'm one of them. I mean, how useless was he in the Deathly Hallows? How useless is he ALWAYS? I was out for his blood in HBP, what he did to Hermione, that crap with Lavender. I mean, what a complete bastard. I washed my hands of him at that point, I don't care if he's insecure, it's no excuse for what he did, and anyway he's insecure because he's useless and boring and as Hermione once said has the emotional range of a teaspoon. But for "The Other Hermione" I will probably have to redeem him. Sigh. At least I can disregard HBP and Deathly Hallows Ron and make him a strategical genius, which is what I always wanted JKR to do with him. I guess I have a problem with the person who's supposed to be the heart of the team. He's kinda like Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Completely lame. Hey, maybe I'll take Ron's eye out in the next fic! Barranca: You've been here a while, huh? Thanks. Man, how Battlestar Galactica does that sound, it's all happened before and it will all happen again? I totally thought of that shit before I heard it, I swear! I know they say she isn't but I totally think Starbuck is the head cylon. I am totally in love with her. She is way too good for that whiny princess Apollo. Ocean Reflection: does it mess with me that the latter two books totally kill my plot? I'm pretty ambiguous about it. On the one hand, a big aim of this fic is to be canonical while doing this pairing. So no Ron and Harry-bashing, no turning Tom into a totally faultless guy, etc. And once the books came out that compromised my ability to do that. I started this fic I think a week or two before the Half-Blood Prince came out. I was thinking of waiting until I read it, but I just couldn't stop writing it. And then of course HPB turned out to be really heavy on Tom Riddle. And I would have loved to use that stuff, incorporate Slughorn and Professor Merrythought (who's MIA here, I just haven't managed to fit him/her in). Also, I love JKR's Grindelwald (did anyone else think the laughing boy who stole the elder wand was Aberforth at first? Because I totally did.), and I really want to write a fic about what went down between him and Dumbledore and Aberforth and Ariana. In a way, my fic ended up being pretty on the money about Dumbledore, how manipulative he can be. But I'm glad I'm only dealing with the Grail, because Tom and Hermione tracking down Horcruxes that he hasn't created yet would be an absolute bloody nightmare. So that's the long answer to your question. OK, the fic!

Thing are Beginning

After she and Tom returned from France, Hermione obtained permission from Professor O'Bleeke to miss the next several Arithmancy classes. She couldn't face the Slytherin boys for a while yet. She couldn't face Alicia. Yes, they had tried to kill her. Yes, they were prejudiced and dangerous. But she couldn't blame them for what they did. After all, they had been trying to save themselves. If they were trying to kill Tom, it was to prevent him from controlling their fates. It was for much the same reason she had come back to this time. They shared much the same purpose as she had once had herself.

She couldn't face Tom, either. She went to the kitchens for food instead of the Great Hall's staff table. She avoided the library for perhaps the first time in her life. She needed distance, and time in which to order her priorities. If she was going to save Tom, sacrifice the life she had been about to lead in her own time, her family and her friends, she had to be sure. There could be no chance, not even a shred of one, that Tom might become who he had once become.

But it had been the diary-possessed Tom that had become Voldemort, hadn't it? Even so, as Tom himself had said, he had created the diary. He had created Voldemort. It was not the diary-possessed Tom who killed Myrtle, who had tried to kill Pendrake Malfoy as the penalty for telling an uncomfortable truth. She had just watched him shoot and kill men. But. But they had been trying to kill Tom, had been trying to kill her. After all, what right did she have to judge when she had killed Bellatrix LeStrange, not to save her parents, but to avenge them and save herself? Tom at least had been trying to save her. But she had not killed Draco Malfoy after he killed Ron; she had learned her lesson. And she could not even bring herself to kill the future Lord Voldemort.

Half a dozen times she walked halfway to Professor Dumbledore's office to confess everything. It would be so much easier to let him decide. Surely he wouldn't continue with the plan if there was a chance for Tom to redeem himself? Half a dozen times she turned back. Because she wasn't sure. Hermione sighed on her half-dozenth return to the Ravenclaw dormitories. She used to be so sure, about everything. Thou shalt do thy homework. Thou shalt tell your friends when they venture into rule-breaking territory. Thou shalt threaten to tattle on said friends when they continue to venture into rule-breaking territory. Thou shalt pretend to let friends copy homework while secretly using convoluted grammar and unusual word combinations to make them pay attention to what they were copying and, hence, learn. The former gospel of Hermione had no application here. And the reason? The only reason? Tom Riddle, past, future, and present.

As she turned the corner she ran into Picus Smith. "Mione!" the boy called happily. "Thank goodness, I was wondering how I was going to get someone to open up the Ravenclaw dormitories to give you this." He handed her a roll of parchment. "From Dumbledore," he said.

"Thank you," said Hermione.

"Where have you been? O'Bleeke has been even more impossible to understand than usual."

"I'll be in class soon, Picus, I'm just incredibly busy right now. If you'll excuse me," she said quickly, and walked briskly to the Ravenclaw entrance. She couldn't stand to make small talk now. When she unrolled the parchment in her dormitory she saw that she was going to have to face her dilemma whether she liked to or not. Dumbledore had summoned her.

.((0)).

"We're going to the Time Machine's site, aren't we?" Hermione asked Professor Dumbledore as they walked through the Forbidden Forest with Professor O'Bleeke.

"Oh, it's a bit more than that," said Professor O'Bleeke happily.

Dumbledore smiled down at Hermione. "Professor O'Bleeke and I have decided to reward your diligence with a bit of a surprise," he twinkled, and withdrew a hand from his robes. "Lemon drop?"

"Candy is hardly a surprise from you," Hermione noted archly, and she heard Professor O'Bleeke stifle a chuckle. They were approaching the clearing from which she had entered this period of time. Through the vegetation, Hermione could make out a shining blue line of light. She quickened her pace in order to see what it was, and gasped as it came into view.

It was the Time Machine. Not the thing itself, but a blueprint, literally. A ghostly blue image hung in place exactly where the original Time Machine had been, threatening to turn into something real at every minute.

Hermione stared at the it. She had seen it many times, she had it written in her mind. There had been diagrams, models, holographic models such as this one, as big as the Time Machine she had traveled back in time with. She had deconstructed this image a thousand times to deduce its workings, and knew it as well as the two men standing beside her.

However, she had never before seen it where it had been, had not smelled the cold, faintly wild vegetable smell of the Forbidden Forest while looking at it, had not had an opportunity to recall going to it, or why she had gone to it. Looking at it now, she could imagine her last moments in her own time, her own desperate run to the Machine with her bag. The bag from her room, where she had watched that last battle, had taken a magical photograph so she would know how to get to Harry the most quickly. A picture she hadn't looked at in months. She could almost hear the screams and tortures, the last thing her world had left for her to hear.

She had not had an opportunity to contemplate the fact that, because of Tom, she would not have to face that last battle, that she might be able to find Harry before those months of torture that preceeded his appearance at the battle, tied to a stake, helpless and almost lost. Ron might live, her friends might live. Her parents, Harry's parents, Neville's parents, Hannah Abbot's relatives, all those that came before Harry's imprisonment, would still die. She took a moment to mourn what she could not change, and it was not a long moment, because here, in the forest, facing the Time Machine, she could not help but see everything that she could save. That she and Tom could save. Her heart flared, with her own blueprint inside of it. Tom Riddle, and who she desperately wanted him to be. So desperately that in this moment she believed in him and them and everything they would do, believed in it completely.

"I've calculated that it will take a month to complete, more or less," said Professor O'Bleeke in a self-satisfied way.

Dumbledore had to vocally prod her three times before she emerged from her reverie, her eyes slightly pink. "Yes," she said faintly. "A month. In a month, we'll go back."


	30. Chapter 30

Hey,

So it was pretty hard finding a cookie from the sequel to this story that doesn't spoil it. But I believe I've found one. I guess it does give fairly heavy hints, but it's a dream sequence, so don't read too much into it. You can find it at the bottom. I have been actually writing the crap out of the sequel, more than I'm writing this story, which, btw, is almost at the end. Probably three or four more chapters left to go. I know, you're so sad. But there will be sequel-ness!

Marisa1—part of the reason he doesn't seek her out, I think, is because it's a bit harder for them to get together now that the holidays are over and everyone's back in school. They still have to pretend to be the most casual acquaintances for Dumbledore's sake, after all. And yes, as you'll see in this chapter, he's up to his usual shenanigans. OceanReflection—yeah, I think Hermione is feeling pretty monumental pressure to just cave to Dumbledore right now, it would make her life a bit easier. Blindfaithoperadiva—I know. Just wait til you finish this chapter.

The Road to Hell

.((0)).

There was less and less time, and Hermione couldn't help but feel it passing. She was in O'Bleeke's class, sitting beside his lectern, her ankle twitching impatiently. She was wasting time. She could feel it slipping through her fingers. She watched Tom, taking notes with his head bent close to his paper, inscrutable as he always was when in public. He no longer sat with the Slytherin boys huddled around him. Of course they wouldn't know who Lord Voldemort was when he came for them. They would have forgotten all about Tom Riddle. Hermione chanced a glance over towards Alicia. The girl was watching the board mutely, and seemed even paler than usual. Upon close inspection, it seemed like she had been crying. Of course there were bumps and snags when they had all returned from France. Jean had visibly floundered in many classes, crucial pieces of information missing from his memory. The other boys weren't keen enough students to wonder why the material seemed harder; they chalked it up to it being NEWT year. But Jean had been panicked and confused. His inability to complete certain complicated Arithmantic equations occasionally surprised Professor O'Bleeke. Hermione wondered if the same thing had happened to Alicia. She knew Tom had paid special attention to her, rifling through the contents of her memories to make sure there was nothing she had left for herself to discover.

When class ended, Alicia drew immediately to Adrian's side. Hermione watched them depart. Tom, on his way out, left a note on the desk nearest Hermione. She picked up the note and unfolded it. "Meet me in the library the night after tomorrow." Hermione looked after his retreating figure and began to pack the seventh year arithmancy texts in her satchel.

"I trust I will see you in the Forest after dinner tonight, Miss Potter," said Professor O'Bleeke as he made his way out of the classroom. She had become so increasingly distant over the past month that all lingering animosity between them had turned into cool professionalism.

"Yes, of course," said Hermione. They were beginning to construct the Time Machine. Dumbledore, the transfigurations expert of the group, was in the main responsible for it, but he had requested that Hermione and Professor O'Bleeke attend the process. Then they would begin the enchantments. Then Professor Dumbledore would set the Are Dlog, and presumably create the temporal fold necessary to make two Toms, one who would go forwards with her, another dispossessed of all memory of the goings on of the year. That had been decided upon ever since the incident with Monsieur Knauss. Hermione suspected that Dumbledore may even shunt the other Tom back to the beginning of the year.

What Dumbledore didn't know was that, during the enchanting process, Hermione would program a different date into the Time Machine than the one they had agreed on. That is, if they found the grail. Hermione hadn't faced the possibility of what they would do if they didn't discover it, and they didn't have long now.

.((0)).

Two nights later, Hermione was following Tom in a circuitous route to the Founder's section of the library. He sat on Slytherin's green and black chair and watched her settle her things on the table and take one of the many indistinguishable chairs around the table.

"You've been avoiding me," he said. It wasn't an accusation so much as a statement of fact.

"Yes." Hermione shrugged. "A lot of people died. I had to think."

"Grindelwald died."

"I had to think about that, too."

"What do you mean?"

She frowned. "Nothing's changed. Everything has happened as it was recorded to have happened. I had to think about whether we could actually change anything."

"But the centaurs—"

"I know." She gave a brief smile. "And now, the Time Machine. It will be finished in a month. There's no more time to think about anything. All we can do now is try to change things." She paused. "I think we can do it."

"Of course we can," said Tom, and stood. He went to the table, where he'd left his satchel, and withdrew a scroll. He unrolled it and placed it in front of her. "Look," he said, pointing to a corner of the parchment.

"Is that—the questing beast?" She looked again at the parchment. It seemed to be a map of creatures. There was a chameleon, a rooster sitting on an egg, a cockroach, and other insects, animals, and plants, each divided by the floors, stairs, and doors of a familiar-looking building blueprint.

"It's a map of Hogwarts." He indicated the chameleon. "That's the Room of Requirement. Those are the kitchens." He indicated the cockroach. He pointed to the rooster with a half-smirk that played on the corner of his mouth that had been torn by Grindelwald. "The Chamber of Secrets."

Hermione looked up at him. "And the Questing Beast?"

"Look at it, Mione."

She did. She expelled a breath. "It has something from all of the founders. A badger's body, snakes for its head, a raven's wings, a griffin's tail." She looked up. "Like the centaurs said. The Grail. Do you know where it is?"

He nodded. "That's why I needed an extra night. I wanted to be sure that I found it before I told you about it.

Hermione indicated the scroll. "Where on earth did you find this?"

"In a muggle library collection. It was stored with other artifacts from Arthurian legend."

"Clever," she said.

"Aren't I?"

She smiled again. "We're really going to do this. We're going to save everyone."

"Even ourselves," he agreed.

Impulsively, Hermione placed her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. "Thank you," she said. He kissed her forehead briefly. "Do you have the grail already?" she asked.

"The door was locked."

"How?"

"It requires blood."

"Oh."

He watched her for a moment. "Mudblood."

"What?"

"Not even I qualify. The blood has to be from a pure muggleborn."

Hermione blinked. "Oh."

"You are, aren't you?"

"Yes—I mean if it doesn't count that there's pureblood in my lineage."

"Ravenclaw wasn't human, really. I'm sure it doesn't count. And Launcelot was a muggle, so—Anyway, you have to cut your palm and place it against the silhouette of the questing beast on the door. And only you will be able to go into the room. It's keyed to the individual who unlocks it, and no one else."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Right." They looked at each other for a moment. Tom brushed his fingers across her lower lip, and she smiled. "Where is it, then?"

"Funnily enough, we'll have to go through my chambers."

.((0)).

Hermione had never before been to Tom's room in the Slytherin Dungeons. She felt as though she shouldn't be here; it felt almost as invasive as seeing him naked. He was not as orderly as she presumed, and as she herself was. His desk was covered in parchment, corners of paper poking out diagonally from under one another. His bed, although made, had two books turned spine-up and face down on it; he clearly used it as a reading couch. Books lay on top of almost everything in the room: a bureau, a stool, even a sink she could see in his bathroom.

"Read much?" Hermione inquired innocently.

Tom threw her a half-amused look. "It's in here. In the wardrobe." Hermione was unsurprised to see there was even a book on the top of this; Tom _was _very tall. He opened the doors to his wardrobe, and Hermione was relieved to see his uniforms neatly hung in a row. They had been pushed aside, and Hermione could see a small cubby hole. Tom put his hand inside it, and a door opened behind a cluster of suit jackets. Hermione immediately pushed them aside and stared into the hole.

"Have you always known this was here?"

"I discovered it my second week in the Head Boy's quarters. It's a tunnel. It goes in a circle, but I did remember a picture of the questing beast. It wasn't until I saw the map that I realized what it meant. I hadn't known it was a door. So I went last night to investigate, and discovered the lock.

Hermione shivered. "That kind of lock is a sign they mean to weaken me before I can find the Grail."

"Maybe they just wanted to keep purebloods out."

"Maybe." She looked at the tunnel. "To think, this wouldn't even be possible without you."

"Glad to be of use." He looked at her for a while. "Can I ask you something?"

Hermione was hesitant to answer; he asked the question as if he knew it to be unpleasant. She told him yes anyway.

"Do you think Dumbledore might have told Grindelwald about me?"

Hermione frowned. She hadn't thought about what Grindelwald had said since Tom had killed him. She remembered how odd it had seemed at the time. Dumbledore's pet. It was the kind of thing Voldemort had every right saying to Harry. "I think it's almost definite, yes. But why?"

Tom's eyes were dark. "Yes. Why is exactly the question I was thinking of."

Hermione didn't like the expression on his face. "Do you think he might have done it so that you would kill Grindelwald?"

Tom did listen to the suggestion, but it was obvious he had other ideas, and she was curious as to what they were. She put a hand on his arm. "Tom?"

"That man has had it in for me ever since I came to Hogwarts." He cocked his head. "And why wouldn't he kill Grindelwald himself?"

"Maybe he couldn't."

"I suppose you've never had him for transfiguration?"

"Why?"

"If you had a chance to see what the man is capable of, you would never say that. I don't like the man, but he's the most powerful magician I have ever paid witness to. I would never cross wands with him by choice."

Hermione was shook by his description. Tom always verged on the arrogant; it was entirely out of character for him to give someone so much credit.

"He knew I was involved with the Basilisk. He knew about Knauss. I suspect he knew I was eavesdropping on him because he always managed to block my hearing when you were in the room."

"You were eavesdropping on him?"

He waved his hand as though shooing away a bothersome insect. "Of course I did. But the point is, his skill goes beyond his wand. He knows far too much, and he is masterful at manipulation."

Tom could have been describing his future self. Funny how the same qualities could go in two such divergent directions. Hermione had to admit he was right, however. How else to describe how Dumbledore dealt with Harry? It was the essence of manipulation, wasn't it? "What? What are you thinking, then?"

"Did he know I would defeat him? He must have known. He probably knew about Alicia and the rest, and permitted them—"

"Tom, that's ridiculous."

"Oh? And why?"

"If he knows about them, then he surely knows about us."

Tom's expression was intense. "What if he does?"

"I would be exiled to the grounds of Hogwarts to carry out the rest of the project in seclusion. That's what he told me would happen if I continued to associate with you."

Tom smirked. The right-hand corner of his lip was now admirably suited for it. "Well, I think his mind's made up about me, don't you?"

"It was made up for him by his future self, don't forget. And me."

"Yes, you." He placed his hand on her head. "You're still Dumbledore's pet, aren't you?"

Hermione shifted her weight. "Let's just put the questions about Dumbledore aside. Within a month, we'll be free of him."

Tom nodded, but she could see he still had his doubts. To be honest, she had her own. Ever since Dumbledore had given her this assignment—ever since that conversation she'd had with Harry that morning years ago—Hermione had reassessed Dumbledore. She had always thought of him as someone determined to keep all of their chess pieces. Now, she knew that both she and Harry were pawns Dumbledore was willing to risk in order to win the game. Hermione might have had a problem with it if she were not also determined to win the game. Tom, of course, wanted a new game, a game he and Hermione could play. Hermione realized that, to a man famous for turning people into pawns, she would never be a pawn him. Only an ally to be persuaded, or potentially, as she had once been, a threat. He would never erase her memories or Imperius her; he had only ever fought her as Voldemort.

She looked at Tom, still preoccupied in his thoughts. What if it wasn't that he had changed, that he was different. What if she was just the one person he was capable of regarding as an equal—besides Dumbledore, who he obviously thought of as a threat.

Tom looked up into her eyes suddenly. "Should we prepare? Before you go in?"

Hermione was caught by the sudden onset of his gaze. She managed to shake her head. "We have no time for that," she said in a low voice.

Tom bent and kissed her, softly. "Follow me," he said.

Hermione copied him as he climbed into his wardrobe and into the tunnel "Lumos," he muttered, and shadows caught and carved his face. He held out a hand and Hermione realized he was offering it to be held. They never really had held hands before. Hermione took his pale white hand. It was cool to the touch and firmly muscled; his grip of her hand was strong. She felt as though she was being carried to her destination.

It wasn't far from the entrance. Hermione could see that the tunnel went on beyond the golden silhouette of the questing beast; presumably it curved back to the entrance. "I don't have a knife," she said as she looked at the golden figure on the wall. It didn't look like a door at all.

"No worries," said Tom. "I have a wand." He extended his hand and Hermione placed hers in it. Tom aimed his wand at her palm and moved it in a downwards arc as he muttered. There was no pain, but the skin was open. Hermione placed her bleeding hand against the silhouette, and then—

Then she was in another room. The light from Tom's wand was gone. So was Tom. "Lumos," she whispered, and looked around her. The room looked like little more than a cave. But here, more than a thousand years ago, Merlin himself had conjured a vision of one of England's defining wars. And here was where Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff had interred the Grail.

Hermione looked around. There was nothing here except dirt. Perhaps she would have to dig? She aimed her wand at her wounded hand, which she had nearly forgotten. "Episky," she whispered. She watched the wound on her hand disappear. Then she looked around the room again.

In the very corner of her eye, she saw a flash of gold. It was not the Grail. It was a golden figurine depicting the questing beast. Hermione bent down to it, wondering why she hadn't seen it before. It was engraved. Hermione read the engraving.

"If your intentions are pure, tell them to me, and do not lay them as stones on the way to Hell, for although the road there is long, it always finds a way to end."

Hermione placed the figurine in her hands. It was no bigger than them. She sighed. "Just come to me if it's the right thing to do," she said, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the Grail was in her hands, and she was no longer in the room. She was in the tunnel, and Tom was sprawled in front of the golden silhouette of the questing beast, asleep. Hermione kneeled beside him. He looked so guileless when he was sleeping. Human. Well, he was. Even if the sorcerer's stone did make him immortal.

"Tom," she said, and he opened his eyes.

He sat up with an unearthly speed. "Mione. Merlin—I didn't know what to do."

"What?"

"You're back. It's been hours, and I couldn't get in—"

"Really?" Hermione put her hand out, and Tom saw the Grail. He stared for a moment and then touched it gingerly with his fingers.

"By Jove, you've actually done it."

"Do you know what this means?" she asked.

"What?" he said, an actual, real smile on his face, making his eyes seem more brown than black.

"We've done everything. We have absolutely everything we need—" she didn't even complete the sentence before his lips were on hers.

"Yes," he mumbled into her lips. "Three weeks," he said, nearly laughing. She kissed him back. He was laughing, then, laughing into her mouth, a laugh like she'd heard on a thousand other boys, completely human. Yes, she thought, watching his dark eyes with her own, as he put his hand on the small of her back. A bit misguided, perhaps, but human, unpossessed, and with a world of possibilities in front of him instead of the yoke of fate strung around his neck.

She wasn't sure how exactly they got back to his room, but they were on his bed—despite the books strewn everywhere it was made so neat it was almost impossible to lift the sheets from the corners they were tucked into. They were naked and in each others' arms, practiced and practicing, kissing as they found purchase in one another, kissing as they pushed against each other and provoked their pleasures, as they had before, but in a different way, their actions unrestrained and approaching joy. Usually Tom bit back his impulses, but now he let his voice spill from throat when it wanted, touched what he wanted to and let the half knowledge of what another person needed guide his actions in a way close to Legilimency. Hermione looked at him and didn't think of Voldemort, not once, for perhaps the first time. He held her face as he held her body, and they watched each other, feeding off the nearly naked emotions on their faces, almost free, nearly unchained from their worldly posts. They felt the heat between them growing. Soon, soon they would let it loose.

.((0)).

It was an innocuous-enough seeming Wednesday morning when Hermione opened a newspaper and found her world turned around.

"Ministry investigates the death of a Muggle Family," read the headline. The paper went on to read: "Although Grindelwald has fallen, it seems that the anti-muggle sentiment that he campaigned for had not yet died out. The death of a muggle family, the Riddles, came to the attention of the magical community due to the inexplicability of the death. There were no marks on the body or signs of a struggle. The muggles have chalked it up to a bizarre poisoning and are prosecuting the family's muggle housekeeper. Ministry officials, however, know better. Gerald Fudge, a Ministry official, says that the Auror department suspects the Avada Kadavada curse. He says that the Ministry has been trying to pass legislation through to ban that curse, the Cruciatus, and a mysterious new curse used under the Grindelwald campaign, known as the Imperius. The so called Unforgivable Bill has been stalled in debates for the past three years."

With a calmless that belied the sudden unsettling of her composure, Hermione neatly folded the newspaper and placed it on the table. She put her hand over her mouth, trying to rally her thoughts into a rational direction, and was unable to. She stood up, and then sat back down, looking for Tom's dark head at the Slytherin table. He was reading the paper too, and she could see him peering intently at the article in question. Suddenly, he looked up, and caught her eye. She almost startled at the intensity of it. Slowly and deliberately, Tom shook his head. Hermione felt herself nodding in response. After all, it couldn't be. He had the Sorcerer's Stone. There was simply no reason for it.

But Hermione could not keep herself from acknowledging that it was perfectly possible. He had found the Grail, after all. All he needed now was to put blood into it. He might have killed his father, his father's entire family. She couldn't help herself from noting the date of the family's death in the subtitle, and that it corresponded to the one she knew the Riddles had been killed on. It might all be happening again, the way it had before. He might not have changed, she might not have saved him. If that was true, he would probably kill her. Or would he? Would he rather go to the future? Had he already gone with her, in 1945, hiding the true reasons for his complicit departure? Would she ever be sure of him?

The tenuous but manic happiness that had settled over her and Tom and their plans was fractured by the doubt. There was only one thing to do to make sure things turned out right. Hermione watched the dark head, now poring over the article, and knew she couldn't do it. Tom or the world, she thought to herself, and watched him finish the article.

PREVIEW

THE OTHER HERMIONE

She is in a cave, and all that is with her is a golden figurine, which, before she can glimpse its shape, turns into a bed. It is immense. She hadn't realized the small little space had such high ceilings. There are two figures on the bed, in between a set of golden curtains. One, of course, has dark hair, and his naked torso is pale, as pale as the girl's skin is underneath him. The girl is muttering some vague equation, a rhythmic lilt to the words, the words just out of reach. She knows before she sees the curly brown hair across the pillow, before Tom lifts his head and uncovers the face, that it is her own. Her eyes are closed and she is murmuring. Tom is looking at her, herself, his hand still drawing the other her towards him by the small of her back. He smiles wickedly and places his other hand on her thigh, inching its way deliberately up. She, the other her, that is, not Hermione but also Hermione, is in her underwear. Her bottoms, at least. Tom turns back to the other her and covers her left breast with his mouth. She lets out a sigh, a murmur. Hermione almost does, too. There is a faint rush of feeling somewhere in the periphery of her awareness. She feels as if, if she touches it, it will be her own.


	31. Chapter 31

Readers: Ugh, I'm sorry that took so long. This chapter just had this kind of difficult tension build-up and dispersal arc that was kind of impossible to figure out. So I'm sorry I reneged on the weekly update thing. I'll be back at it with another installment this weekend, hopefully.

Marisa1: I have a Hannukwanzmas present for you. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it's something you were hoping I'd do and I wasn't going to but then I did it. Oh, and that preview—it was a dream. No time travel in the sequel. All I can say is: you'll see.

Barranca: I'm so glad you said that, I thought I was doing a kind of crap job myself. But I am trying!

SailorHecate: ooh, so glad you're back. I was worried I'd lost a few people in my feet-dragging, so I'm glad you know the end. Actually, I've had the ending paragraph finished pretty much from my first writing of this story.

Emeraldice77: Hopefully I explain Hermione's suspicions a bit more clearly in this chapter. From the time that Tom first kissed her Hermione has known that it was a possibility that Tom is manipulating her—now that he knows what happens in the future he has plenty of reason two, and their entire relationship could be a ruse. And logical Hermione could never dismiss her suspicions simply because she cared for Tom.

Blindfaithoperadiva: Yep, they have everything they need to go forward with their plan, so long as nothing screws their plans up. And I would never do that, would I (cues evil laugh).

.((0)).

"Mione."

"Yes?"

"Mione—wait. Stop walking away from me."

"I'm not walking away from you. I'm just walking to the Astronomy Tower," she said coldly. "It's where we agreed to meet, isn't it?" It was a childish thing to say and she immediately regretted it.

"I didn't do it. You've got to know that."

She paused; they were nearly there anyway. "How, exactly? All the evidence I have, every piece of it, fits into a case against you. Explain to me what I'm supposed to do with that." It was the truth and she forced herself to say it. She didn't worry about the implications; that Tom might be a liar, that she might have been seduced. That was only in the periphery of her thoughts, and it made her skin crawl with shame for being so foolish. She decided to worry about the facts instead.

"Is there anything I can say?"

Hermione folded her arms. "Explain it to me. Explain to me who killed them, if it wasn't you."

"Wouldn't you be more worried if I could?"

"That's a pretty tactical thing to say. Would you be thinking of tactical responses if you weren't guilty?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Of course I would. I think of everything tactically."

She gave him a withering glance. He was right, and it was annoying. "I'll look. Of course. But until I find something, or you find something, to explain it, then…"

"Then you can't talk to me?"

Hermione thought about it. "More or less. I mean, if you did—" she couldn't look at him.

"If I murdered them?"

"Well, if you murdered them, then you're not who I thought you were, or more properly who you led me to believe you were. And that would mean, necessarily, that you've been lying to me. And there's perfectly good reasons to lie to me. For instance, to escape death. To go into the future. To have a descendant of a founder to help you find the Gates to the Faer Land. That you might have known about all along. It might explain your knowledge of all the secret chambers and hidden nooks of Hogwarts. I have to consider you against a world, Tom. I have to confirm who committed the murders."

"Priori Incantatem my wand."

She raised her eyebrows. "You might have used another wand."

"You've really thought this through."

"Of course I have. I always think things through."

He extended his wand. "Then take this as a gesture."

Hermione took it, and gave him a sideways glance. "Sorry about this. If I'm wrong, that is." She waved her own wand over Tom's and intoned the Priori Incantatem. She reviewed the wand up until their time in France. She saw spells she didn't expect to see, but she didn't see any that he'd had to have used to get to the Riddle house in Shropshire, and no Aveda Kedavedas except the ones he'd used in France.

"I see you've taken some of my books," she said at last.

"Well, you can't blame me. You would have done the same thing."

It was true. She would have. A library from the future? It was irresistible, would have been irresistible to herself even at rule-obsessed eleven. She shook her head. "I believe you, Tom, but I don't _know_," she said. "The risk," she added, without elaborating or needing to.

"I didn't do it," he said again. He seemed not to be worried, sure that he could discover proof in the limited time—two weeks, now, that they had. He seemed exactly as he should if he weren't lying, or else he was a masterful actor. Unfortunately, Hermione knew very well that Tom Riddle would grow up into, and sometimes already was, a masterful actor. He was smiling at her, as if her reaction was an amusing joke.

"Don't you care that your family died?" she couldn't help asking.

Tom sighed. "Oh, why should I? They were never my family when they were alive." He spoke of them contemptuously. On afterthought Hermione realized she might have been worried if he didn't.

"Don't you think if they were killed it's got to have something to do with you?"

He looked up at her, somewhat startled. He hadn't thought of that at all. "You're right," he said wonderingly, and Hermione could see that he was already calculating, and then, very quickly, he must have reached some conclusion, because he absentmindedly took his wand back from Hermione. "I think I'll have a look," he said

"At the Riddle house?"

"Where else?"

"But I'm sure the police aren't finished with their investigation."

"Oh, they're just muggles. Anyway, the police haven't been much with their investigations since the Blitz started."

"Right. Well, I'll come with you, then."

"Why? Do you think I'd tamper with the evidence?"

"You? The very idea."

"Oh, ye of little faith," Tom muttered. "Come along, then. I trust you can apparate?"

"What about the Knight Bus?"

"No one will notice us if we apparate."

"But I've no idea what the destination looks like."

There was a pause. "Use legilimens." He said it stiffly. He didn't like allowing an invasion into his mind, even if only in a limited capacity.

"You've been there before?"

Tom's eyes shifted at the prompting of some memory he'd never shared. "When I was sixteen," he said.

"Oh."

He turned to her. "We'll go from Hogsmeade. Legilimens me, already."

Without thinking about it, her hand moved forwards. Without even shifting his eyes, Tom clasped her hand in his. Confirmation. That he accepted her suspicions as par for the course. Probably, he wouldn't respect her if she didn't have them. After all, someone was doing an excellent job framing him, if someone was, and he wouldn't rate her intelligence highly if she didn't suspect him of doing the job. A certain levity in her expression showed that she knew, that he might not have done it, but what could she do until she knew? She put her hand back in his, let him guide the wand towards himself. Then she said it. "Legilimens."

Shropshire unfolded before her, green and blue and green, the fields with a balding sort of forest around them and at least three estates located a quarter mile apart from each other. Two of those estates seemed to contain at least thirty acres of land. The last was hemmed in by an officious looking structure, a post office or library or office building of some kind. There were paths in between the three estates, and paths sprawled through each house's territory.

She could see Tom to the left of her, facing due west, the back of his head to her vantage point. She looked over, to see what he could see. It was a—well, a hovel, a shack really. But apparently it was also a home of some sort, because there was an ogre of a man sitting on a stool outside of the door. Above him, to the left, in the center of the door, was a dead snake. He was whittling a rotting piece of wood he was holding.

Tom turned again. She could see his profile, but he couldn't see her. He was facing the fields, where all the forests thinned out into crops and properties and ranges for the animals to feed on. He was watching some horses in the northernmost of fields. There were three of them. All of them were black, but one of them had white markings around its mouth and hooves. All of them had long hair covering their forelegs.

There was a man walking towards the horses with a bit of stray barley in his hands. He was tall, and he had black hair. With his dark hair, he mixed more with the horses than any element of the landscape. Something in the way he moved, the way he walked, in an athletic, sure manner, reminded her of Tom, and made her understand that he was watching his father.

He looked younger, watching his father, with a look of infinite disdain and longing. His uncle had stood up from the stool and was walking towards him. He was hissing something at him in Parseltongue. He hadn't taken three steps when Tom, still not looking, had Imperiused him. That day, he had simply gone on watching his father. It was the next day he'd inquired after his mother.

Hermione finited the spell. Had he come again, and done more than watch his father? Did he have the blood somewhere, ready to put into the cup, with Grindelwald's and—perhaps Myrtle's? No, the blood of a friend. She looked at Tom, his profile unchanged from the vision she'd conjured of the Riddle house in Shropshire. He was still focused on the day he had provided to her as a memory. "Shall we go?" he asked, without turning.

"Yes," said Hermione. "Let's."

Hermione left the Slytherin Dungeons and fairly led the way in her invisibility cloak. They went to the statue of the one-eyed witch, incanted "Dissendium," and took the secret path marked by her statue to Hogsmeade.

The sky was turning gray with evening when they emerged from Honeydukes. Hermione was struck, as always when she visited Hogsmeade, with that strange, displaced, too-familiar sensation. Not exactly a memory or a feeling, but a combination of them. How strange to be walking down the same streets with Tom Riddle that she had walked down with Ron and Harry. She couldn't explain why the feeling assaulted her so much more in Hogsmeade than it did in Hogwarts.

Tom strode over the field by the Hog's head. He held out his hand. "Ready?"

Hermione nodded, frowned, and took his hand. They turned on their heels at the same time. They disappeared, and appeared on a path for the most part obscured by forest. It was near the shack Tom's uncle had lived in. Tom guided her past it to his house. Hermione could see the skeleton of a snake hanging by the door.

Hermione indicated the decoration. "Is your uncle still—"

"He's in Azkaban."

"For what?"

"Muggle-baiting."

"Oh."

"I know. I have a lovely family." They turned a bend and the Riddle House—mansion, really—was in view.

Hermione probably should have remained quiet. Instead, she said, "Well, perhaps your father—"

"My father never made an inquiry as to my existence."

"You can't know that."

Tom cocked an eyebrow. "Wizards aren't the only ones with paperwork."

"Oh. Even so—"

"No. I understand him. I imagine it must have been an extended and realistic nightmare to him, a slave to a witch's desires."

"What?"

"A love potion. A weak, ineffective love potion. The kind any giggling third-year girl can do, and done poorly. But because it was a muggle it took apparently took him a while to resist it."

"I didn't know that."

"Oh yes. My mother was not very pretty at all—you've seen my uncle. I've seen a picture of her. Her left eye is actually higher than her right eye. One of her arms is shriveled. I think my grandfather married his sister." Tom shivered. "That on one side, and a muggle on the other."

Hermione shook her head. "Oh, honestly. You and muggles. Let it go."

Tom shrugged. "What did your parents do?"

"They were doctors," Hermione told him without thinking. She knew why she was lying, but it was disconcerting to have to do it. She didn't want to emphasize her doubts of him, and she didn't want to tell him anything more about herself. Lying was the most logical option, and apparently her mouth had taken it on her behalf.

Tom was looking down at her, taking advantage of his height. The left corner of his lip turned up. "You're lying," he said.

Hermione felt her face go crimson. "Oh, bollocks. Sorry. It seemed like the only thing to do."

"I like it when you lie." The corner of his lip turned up more, his mouth half-smiling. "You do it so badly."

"Oh, shut up."

"It's cute. Really becoming, I mean."

"Thank you." They were nearing the gate. Hermione couldn't see any horses in the field, but there were sheep to one side of the house, in a makeshift pen.

"I think my affection for you is contingent on your distrust in me. The day you trust me is the day my love for you will die."

Hermione had to laugh at that. "Well, it's not as if there weren't times when I have trusted you."

"Relatively," Tom said, accompanying his comment with a pair of raised eyebrows. He slipped his arm into the crook of hers. "And in hindsight, they have been very boring times. Perhaps I'll have to take up murder and mayhem to keep the flame of your distrust alive."

Hermione supposed she should shake off his arm, but it was very comfortable to hold onto his arm while climbing down the pebble path towards the gate. Tom tapped the top of her head with the tip of his wand, and a cold yoke crawled over her head and down her spine. She returned the favor with a disillusionment charm of her own. She had her invisibility cloak with her, but it was a hindrance to wear while inspecting the scene of a crime. The door was unlocked, although there was police tape on the door, which was easy enough to step over.

"Amazing security," said Hermione. "Don't they think it will be looted?"

Hermione had an answer within minutes. Although the house appeared to be empty of people, although there seemed to be no police, they had done a very thorough clean-up job. Everything except the essentials had been removed from the house. Pictures, decoration, furniture. The house was empty and white all around them, except for the chandeliers above.

Tom was regarding the house with that same half-disdainful, half-longing expression he'd looked at his father with. "This isn't where it was done."

"How do you know?" Hermione asked. It wasn't an innocent question.

"I can feel it," he replied, brushing the suspicious nature of the question aside. "It's coming from there." He extended his hand towards an open door in the corner of the entrance room. "Besides, they wouldn't clear the scene of the crime. They've requisitioned everything they could for the war here, but they'll have to wait for the furniture from the dining hall." He walked towards the door, through a puddle of light thrown on the floor by the window. Hermione followed him.

It was the only room where the furniture was left; clearly, it had been a dining hall. The bodies of Tom's family were outlined on the table, where they had all fallen, surprised at their supper.

"It was just one curse," he said. "He used the dinner platter to reflect it."

"How do you know that?"

"They all fell at the same time. Someone would have stood up if he'd done them one by one. And, see—the dinner platter's got a ding in it."

"He could have put them in the places they were found in."

"That wouldn't be like him."

"Like who?"

Tom was perplexed. "I don't know. But I can feel him. He just came in here, cast one spell, and left. He didn't even need to think about it. He saw the dinner plate when he was outside, through the window and thought of using it."

Hermione was giving him a calculating look. "Do you still have the diary?"

"It's destroyed."

"So you do."

"I do. I don't want it out of my sight."

"Even though it's destroyed."

"It could be restored."

"Yes, that's what I was thinking."

"What do you mean?"

"Unless it's just a corrective effect of the Are Dlog, the diary's got to be restored so Second Year can happen."

"Oh? What's second year?"

"Your eyes were red in that field in France."

"Were they?"

"Same as when you were possessed by your diary. Same as Voldemort has, actually."

He looked at her for a long moment. "I imagine I look very dashing."

Hermione rolled her eyes. She looked again at the scene of the crime, and sighed. "The only place they register the geographical location of a spell is at the Ministry."

"So when do we break in?"

"Sure you're not in Gryffindor?"

Tom stopped dead in his tracks. "I take that as a high insult."

Hermione broke out into laughter at this, and Tom raised his eyebrows. "I was in Gryffindor," she said, horrified a moment later when she realized she'd given him too good a piece of information.

Tom looked at her incredulously. "Beg pardon?"

"I was in Gryffindor," she said, quietly.

"I refuse to believe that."

"No, it's true."

"No, I'm telling you, I don't care if it's true. I simply refuse to believe it."

Hermione gave him a halfhearted smile. Then she returned her gaze to the dining table with its chalk outlines, chagrined too late and immediately regretting her disclosure. "Well, anyways, how are we going to figure this out?"

"Could get Malfoy to do it. His father's big in the Ministry. I bet he could get information about the Ministry investigation."

"But if they have that information, why haven't they found the killer yet?"

Tom shrugged. "I don't know." He walked to the table and pressed his fingertips to the edge. "There must be something I can do." He was silent for a moment, his eyes closed, and Hermione watched his placid face as he tried to feel more about the magic.

She knew some people had this ability to feel the pollution that magic left behind, but she herself had never tried it. She made a mental note to look up theory and practice when she had time—when she was back in her own world. She realized that she would still have her library, the books she'd brought back in time with her. It was a comforting thought. She almost allowed herself to forget that she might have to change her plans regarding that future after all. If there was no proof here that Tom hadn't been the killer, if there was proof that he was—well, if he was, then he was a liar, and it would be easier to change her mind about a liar than someone who might be innocent. And if he might, would she really bring him to be killed? Wouldn't she watch him, instead, until she knew? Perhaps it was possible to find truth and absolution in the future.

She stood still as she thought of it. Why hadn't she thought of it before? "I'm sure I have books about this in my library," she said. "There's got to be something in it about this case."

Tom looked up from the table. "Yes, I'd forgotten about that," he said, and sighed. "It's just as well, I can't get much more out of the table. And besides, you'd never take something only I can see as proof, would you?"

"Probably not," she replied neatly, a little primly.

He reached down and tucked her hair behind her ear, and she didn't meet his eyes. "You—" he began, but stopped as he heard something. Hermione heard it too, a sound like someone had left a computer on, only much louder. "Oh, bloody hell. It's the bombs again."

That's when Hermione realized she was hearing the beginnings of an air raid. "Should we leave?"

"Nox. Seeing as the blackout curtains are open, I'd say yes." Now the noise was closer to a falling airplane, far off but coming closer. "There's a bomb shelter in the back."

Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"Surely you can't think one doesn't notice things like bomb shelters during a war."

"Oh. Right. Yes, you're perfectly correct." She gestured. "Lead the way."

Tom turned smartly on his heel and, after the door, turned down a corridor that branched off from the Main entrance of the house. The noise was getting louder, and Hermione had no concept of when the bomb would hit. And then another screech opened up in the air. Tom was rushing down the hall, now, so Hermione rushed, too. He'd gone into a kitchen and breakfast room, and was fumbling at the door. "Figures this is locked," he said, pointing his wand at it and muttering "Alohamora."

Hermione thought it would have been easier to simply adjust the muggle lock, since they were on the inside, but that was her opinion. In either case they were outside, and she could see the bomb. Tom kneeled next to a bulkhead buried into the dirt and threw open the doors. He pulled her roughly over and pushed her inside. Hermione stumbled down the short flight of stairs, and then the bulkhead's heavy metal door was slamming shut, and Tom was turning something, and then an explosion shook the room in what Hermione could only imagine was akin to what an earthquake felt like. She sat on the floor abruptly to keep from falling.

"All right?" asked Tom, and lit his wand. Before he finished his question a second bomb hit, closer, and he was knocked off his feet. He sat heavily onto a table bolted into the wall.

"Merlin, how can people tolerate this?"

"They're not too good at it. That's the point, I think." He held his hand out to help her on the table. The silence that hung in the aftermath of the bombs seemed to echo.

"Do you think that's it?"

Tom shook his head. "Probably not. The more they throw, the more chance they have of hitting something worthwhile."

"Tom?"

"Yes?"

"How did you protect yourself from the bombs when you went back to the orphanage?"

"I reinforced the building. It's fairly indestructible now."

Another whistle started. Like a firecracker, Hermione thought, as the whistle grew louder, into a roar of velocity. "I can't stand how you can't tell when it's going to hit."

"Spend long enough listening to it and you will. Try to relax."

The bomb was growing louder. Hermione's head was turned towards the dimly illuminated bulkhead doors, as if they would tell her when the explosion was going to occur. It was loud now, as loud as the others had been when they—

There was another explosion, not as close as the others, but it shook the room and Hermione grabbed Tom's arm. He smiled at her. "Don't worry. They're just muggle toys. And this muggle toy will keep us safe from the other ones."

"Don't patronize me," Hermione replied, letting go of his arm. "Or muggles." She stood up and wandered through the room. "It's rather small," she noted. "I can't see this being comfortable for the entire family."

"Well, they've no need of it anymore."

Hermione turned to him. Her shoulders rose as her ears detected the high pitched whine of another bomb, then two, then three. She could feel the blood draining from her face, anticipating the explosions.

"Look at me."

"What?"

He stood with his hands on her shoulders, head cocked. "Look at me." She did, and in the time it took for their eyes to meet, another bomb exploded. Tom steadied her, inclining against the table. She overbalanced and realized her legs were shaking. Tom noticed.

"Oh, be quiet," she muttered before he had a chance to say anything. She crawled onto the table, and another bomb hit, close, and she tumbled into Tom's lap and he held her there, waiting for the third explosion. When it came, the explosion, it felt softer with Tom's arms around her.

Silence fell. Warily, Hermione withdrew herself from Tom's lap and drew her knees to her chest. He looked away from her, towards the exit. After all, he could be Voldemort, couldn't he? He could have been acting this whole time. He could be acting, now. Hermione forced herself to scrutinize him objectively. The trouble was, she was all tangled up in his motivations; she'd discovered things about him he couldn't have meant her to know, and had understandable reasons, explanations, and the diary to scare away the figment of Voldemort. It was possible he'd orchestrated it all, though. Why? Could he have found out everything, that first night she'd come to Hogswarts? She remembered his eavesdropping; he even had some control over the paintings, even the ones near Dumbledore's office. Perhaps he had been able to break into her conversations with Dumbledore after all.

Tom turned to her. It was silent but Hermione's ears were ringing. They stared at each other for a long moment. The expression in Tom's face as he watched her was inscrutable. It wasn't clear if he recognized this recently worked up doubt in her eyes, and after a moment, he turned away from her again. The shriek of another bomb punctured the silence. Hermione looked at her legs. Although they felt weak, they weren't shaking now that they didn't have to support her.

He could even kill her here, if he planned to remain in this time. It would be perfect. The falling bomb grew louder, but it was much quieter than the others, and further away. Hermione listened to it and examined Tom's shaded profile. He started to say something, but it was obscured in the explosion of the bomb. The shelter barely shook this time.

"What?" asked Hermione.

"I said, Legilimens me."

Hermione stared at him. He was still turned away from her. "What?" she asked faintly.

"If you see everything I did that week, you'll have to know I didn't do it."

Hermione shook her head. "No. There's the Psychoduplicas spell. It masks your mind."

"I'm not familiar with that spell."

"It's possible that you are, so I can't legilimens you."

"Well, at least I won't be legilimensed. There's your library. Or the Ministry Investigation."

"The Ministry Investigation never turned up anyone," said Hermione.

"You forget. We've changed time. The stars have varied their course. Maybe this time they will find the murderer. And if not that, then there's--" Tom cut himself off. "Well, alternatives."

"What?"

"You really wouldn't like it."

Hermione simply raised her eyebrows and allowed a moment to pass. "Well?"

He stared at his lap and shook his head. "The Necroliberius Incantation."

Hermione shook her head. "That is very dark magic."

"It's the only thing I can think of that's foolproof. As a last resort, of course."

He was right in that it would be foolproof. If they restored a Riddle and supplied him with Veritaserum, he'd certainly be able to disprove the theory that Tom had killed him. But calling a soul, an innocent one, back into a rotted body was too cruel a thing to do, and the only way to send them back was an Avada Kedaveda. Hermione said nothing, hoping it just wouldn't come to that. She'd rather go into the future with Tom unsure about whether or not he'd committed the crime than use the Necroliberius Incantation. She said nothing, looked at Tom, and shrugged.

"It's been quiet for a pretty long time. If they do turn around, it'll take them a while. Now's our best chance to leave."

"Yes," said Hermione. "Back to Hogwarts, absolutely." Away from the bombs. Away from close proximity to Tom, time to think.

They went up to the bulkhead doors, Tom first. When he pressed against the doors they didn't give. "Revelo," he whispered, pointing his wand. The bulkhead doors disappeared, but their handles did not, and both of them could see that someone had put a muggle lock on the outside of the doors. "Alohamora," he said, pointing his wand at it. It didn't work.

"Who did this?" asked Hermione.

"Whoever framed me, I wager."

"Well…" she said, and frowned. "It might be the Ministry. We are at a crime scene."

"Whoever it is, it's better to find out outside of this shelter than inside," said Tom. "Step back." Hermione did, automatically, and so did Tom. He pulled her under the table, aimed his wand at the doors, and said, very firmly, "Dispactum."

Hermione had to stem the resulting explosion with her wand; she had been half-anticipating it anyway. When she looked up, she saw that the interior of the bomb shelter, including and especially the stairs, had been totally destroyed, but the bomb shelter itself had not. She began to feel the stirrings of panic.

She moved towards the shattered stairs and the bulkhead door tilted above them. She guided her wand in a series of passes, feeling the presence of the spells settled into the material of the shelter. Spell, rather. One muggle lock, and one wizard lock. The muggle lock was an insult, a joke, a signification of the wizard lock. The ward that Hermione probed with her wand was impenetrable. She wasn't familiar with it at all, and it seemed to constantly shift in place. When she looked over to Tom she could see him frowning intensely at the bulkhead doors.

"That lock outside is a joke," he muttered.

"I was thinking that," Hermione replied. At the same time, they extended their wands past the doors, following the ward around the room. There was no break, no chink in the ward. The only way out was through it. It was, clearly, a work of craftsmanship.

"Looks like we're stuck here for a while yet."

"Don't you think there's a way out?"

"Not one that's readily apparent."

"There's no telling when whoever it is will come," she said.

"If it is when."

"I'm sure it's when. Someone obviously expected somebody to be here who wasn't supposed to be here, and designed a trap for them. Or else they designed one specifically for us. It could be the Ministry or a murderer, but either way, they will certainly open those doors."

Tom glanced at her. "You're right."

"Why aren't you worried?"

Tom looked around the room. "I'm beginning to get very curious."

"Never a good sign."

He looked down at her, the difference in their heights causing his head to cock at a sharp angle. "Who benefits?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Who benefits?"

"Yes. Who would benefit from murdering some muggle family?"

"Someone like your uncle, I expect."

"Then why frame me?"

"The thesis I'm working on is if you were framed."

"Well, if, then why? Framing, certainly, but why me?"

"You have a fair number of enemies—"

"None of them competent. I don't know who benefits. I've no idea who I know that is both competent and has a reason to frame me. But if we change the question from who benefits… to what is the benefit—"

"You in Azkaban, I suppose."

"I don't go to Azkaban."

"Whoever it is, if it is, doesn't know that."

"Has it escaped your notice that the only person who suspects me of the crime is you, Hermione? Dumbledore does too, perhaps, but—well, it's a particular kind of frame-up, isn't it, to frame someone so certain people think they committed a crime. It seems like the only benefit that would come from that kind of frame-up is—your distrust."

"Mine in particular," said Hermione.

"So you see, I'm very curious. Who would want you to distrust me?"

"Weren't you just saying a bit ago that you preferred it when I didn't trust you?" Hermione said lightly. "Perhaps you killed your family and framed yourself in order to get me to distrust you."

Tom laughed. "Dumbledore."

Hermione stared at him.

"I'm joking, Mione. Can you imagine, the personification of a fizzing whizbee doing in his student's family in order to keep his protégé on task?" He sighed, and in an unpracticed, rare moment for him he put his face in his hands. Only for a moment did he hold the pose; as soon as he realized how vulnerable it made him he sat with his usual strict posture. Perhaps he did care a little bit.

"Let's talk about something else. We won't solve a murder inside a locked room." Unconsciously she grabbed his hand. When she realized what she was doing she let go. Hermione almost growled in frustration. It was absolutely impossible to know how to act with Tom now. Her pride wouldn't allow her to show affection in the case that he had been pretending this whole time, but at bottom, Hermione didn't believe he'd committed the crime. Logic and ethics absolutely dictated that she must find out; meanwhile, the understanding she shared with Tom, and the person she'd become with him, was suspended just beyond her grasp. "Do you think they'll come back?" she asked, referring to the planes.

"Probably," he said, and squeezed her hand for a moment before letting go.

They sat side by side in the silence, the wreckage of the room around them. They waited for the planes to return, but it seemed they wouldn't. Ten minutes stretched into twenty.

"Do you ever read muggle books?"

"As thoroughly as I do the magic ones," said Hermione, stirring beside him.

"I thought you'd make a point of that. I've read them, myself. Those ridiculous stories."

"Those ridiculous stories," Hermione mimicked meaningfully.

Tom ignored her. "They're all about how weak they are. People facing mortality and enduring disgusting illnesses and being the victims of artistic disasters. Everything the muggles have left from the Founder's era is a book about a king dying despite everyone's best efforts. Merlin is the one who lives."

If there was a neglected area of Hermione's reading, it was wizarding tales. Books designed for romantic eleven-year old witches were obviously unappealing, and so were the boys' Quidditch hero books. Still, children are led to the likes of Shakespeare and Melville through children's stories, and even Hermione had read the muggle fairy stories. Perhaps she rarely read magical fiction because she'd never read the wizarding children's stories, and by the time she was an adolescent she was too serious to read what her peers were. So she had no basis for comparing magical literature to muggle literature. Perhaps what Tom said was true. Muggle stories _were_ preoccupied with weakness and failure. As many great stories about triumph as there were, those stories about man's futility seemed to be a more fertile ground for art to bloom in.

"Even their music is sad. Not that modern crap that passes these days, but carefully composed music, their good music, Bach and Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, and it's almost always sad."

Hermione smiled thinking about what he might say about her own time's music.

"See, even they know how pathetic their lives are. What use are they?"

"Their brains," she replied.

"But their brains without magic—"

"Put the good ones on par with the mediocre wizards, and the great ones with the great wizards. It's an exponential thing, the mind working within limits."

"Can you honestly believe that?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "What makes us better than Pendrake and Picus and all the rest?" she asked.

Tom smiled at her. "Did I just hear you admit that you're better than the general population of wizards?"

"Maybe that's how you'd characterize it. But what makes us better isn't how magical we are, it's how smart we are."

"We're also more magically powerful, in case you haven't noticed."

"I once had a friend who was magically powerful, but he was—well, he wasn't a significant intellectual threat. But very powerful. Still, the way he survived a lot of the things he did was with the help of his friends and with luck."

"Did you help him?"

"Of course I did."

He smiled, in the cool, practiced way he did in public.

"And I'll help you, if I can."

The smile gained no warmth. "Will you? If you can. If you should, you mean."

"Maybe that is what I mean."

He paused. "And what are you going to do if we don't find anything?"

"Dunno," she said. "Go to Dumbledore? I can't do it, I can't kill you-" As soon as the last sentence was punctuated he kissed her. She let him. She returned it. She opened her eyes and said, "Sod it," mumbling it into his mouth.

"If I am," he said daringly, staring at her, "then I give you permission to kill me." He moved his hand over her eyes, palm in, and muttered a brief incantation. She felt her eyes shift, and knew they'd lost their glamour and were gold. "Huh," he said, and kissed each eye. "Magic." He smiled, and then, very distinctly in the lack of light, his eyes showed red.

"There it is again," she said between his lips.

"What?"

"The red."

"Hmm. I wonder what it is."

"Maybe it's the stone. Does Nicholas Flamel have—"

"I dunno. All the wizarding pictures I've seen of him are black and white. I've never checked the color of his eyes. Or his wife's." The last sentence was not insignificant. He kissed her and pulled her slightly towards him by the small of her back. "I'll make you a bet."

"Oh?"

"If you find out it wasn't me, you'll take it. The Stone."

Hermione laughed derisively. "At least you've managed to totally convince me of your innocence, but I just couldn't take the stone. It doesn't seem right."

"It's not right to choose how long to live your life?"

She pursed her lips. "I guess I haven't thought of it like that."

"Then you will?" he asked.

She looked at him and weighed the promise. "O.K."

He smiled again, a real smile, and kissed her. So what if he was lying? For now, at least, inside this bomb shelter, Hermione decided to believe the lie, until she knew better. Tom traced his hand down her back and the tension that had built there during the bombing was released. He bit her shoulder lightly over the robes covering it and Hermione pressed her face into his neck. It smelled like soap and smoke and skin. Tom kissed her again, more deeply, his hands opening her robes in a by now well-practiced gesture. Hermione smiled against his lips and began to unfasten his robes.

The bulkhead doors opened without a sound. Neither Hermione nor Tom noticed. Then, gently, a throat cleared. Hermione and Tom turned, Tom's wand extended, Hermione's hand on her way towards hers.

"Miss Potter. Mister Riddle," said Dumbledore politely. "May I ask what is going on?"

.((0)).

Author's notes: So you know what your X-mas present was, right, Marisa1? I wasn't going to have Hermione tell Tom about what house she was in, but I imagined his reaction was priceless.

"If there was a neglected area of Hermione's reading, it was wizarding tales." You remember how the girl who's read everything didn't know Beadle the Bard's story? I figured there had to be an explanation for that.


	32. Chapter 32

Hey, Merry Hannakwanzmas guys! And Chinese new year soon! All that stuff. So we're getting down to it. I think this story will be finished within three chapters. SailorHecate, emeradice77, Marisa1, OceanReflection, Blindfaithoperadiva, PourlaVie, Barranca, people who read whose handles I don't know, thanks a bunch for sticking with this story for so long! Later,

-V

The bulkhead doors opened without a sound. Neither Hermione nor Tom noticed. Then, gently, a throat cleared. Hermione and Tom turned, Tom's wand extended, Hermione's hand on her way hers.

"Miss Potter. Mister Riddle," said Dumbledore politely. "May I ask what is going on?"

Hermione closed her eyes in actual pain. Tom, his wand still extended towards the bulkhead doors, said in a clipped voice: "Right. You. I knew the lock was you."

She was thinking, was thinking very quickly, but not about how to outsmart this new situation. She was thinking, very seriously, about whether or not Tom's flippant remark about Dumbledore framing him had any accidental merit.

"Perhaps," said Dumbledore, "I can understand your presence, Mr. Riddle. A wish to investigate the deaths of your biological family. What I don't understand is Miss Potter's—"

"You locked the door?" she said.

Dumbledore smiled. "I didn't just lock the door, Miss Potter. The Ministry was concerned about trespassers and assigned me with the task of designing a trap to catch anyone who might cross the crime scene—it seems the non-magical community can hardly be bothered about the Riddle case in this time of war. They've found their scapegoat and jailed him. I created a spell that would create a very convincing bombing in order to drive any visitors of the crime scene towards the bomb shelter." He surveyed the damage to the room. "I see you've witnessed the results."

Eyes still closed, Hermione expelled a tense breath. Thank Merlin there was an explanation. Her tenuous suspicion had induced a wild terror in her than she hadn't known in the whole of her mission. She had to be able to trust Dumbledore.

"I'll need to have very thorough conversations with the both of you," he said. "Together and separately." Although his delivery was typically light, there was a note of disappointment and reproach in his words that Hermione knew was directed against herself.

"What's there to know, old man?" asked Tom bitterly. "As you say, I've my reasons for being here. As you've just witnessed, Mione's reasons for being here have to do with a certain investment in me. Disapproval notwithstanding, there had been no crime; only interest in one."

"Your interest is in a crime that seems to implicate you," Dumbledore specified. "I'm sure Professor Dippet would be just as interested as I in your presence at this place tonight."

Mione chanced a glance at Tom; he was glaring daggers unabashedly at Dumbledore. "It was someone else and you know it."

"An interesting idea, and one that I believe is best discussed at Hogwarts," said Dumbledore peaceably. "Can I trust you two enough to apparate back to Hogsmeade?" He considered Tom especially, and murmured, "Perhaps not."

"We'll side-along," said Hermione, resigned to the fate of explaining things to Dumbledore. They would have to face him sometime, if they were to be able to use the Time Machine. So Tom and Hermione returned with Dumbledore back to Hogwarts.

.((0)).

Dumbledore interviewed Hermione first, alone. She didn't say anything; there was nothing to say. She had strayed too far beyond what the mission had been. She didn't expect Dumbledore to understand. Although there was a chance of him believing her, she still didn't know who had killed the Riddles, and she knew that if they found nothing their hand would be forced. Rather, with Dumbledore's hand on hers, hers would be forced.

Dumbledore sat across from her, his hands folded in front of him, looking at her in a way that made it impossible for her to determine whether he was looking at her or at someplace faraway. He seemed sad. Hermione had never seen him look sad. "I have suspected, of course, but I had hoped… I have certain beliefs in these matters, in the free will of people. I cannot manipulate them against their wishes. I can only believe in the best of them and let them act."

"Professor, I don't know how to begin to explain, but—"

Dumbledore put up a hand. "There are yet things you do not know, Hermione. There are things about you I know better than you know yourself." He gave her a penetrating glance now. "There is a possibility I must test before anything else."

"What possibility?"

"A possibility, which however unlikely, cannot be left unexplored. The possibility that you have been allied with Voldemort from the beginning."

Hermione laughed outright, which she began to regret as soon as she saw that the grave expression on Dumbledore's face remain unchanged. The full impact of being suspected of being a double agent began to unfold. Had her actions been so out of turn as to make him suspect that?

"I will have Legilimens you." He paused. "With your permission, of course."

She blinked. Well, she was innocent, and it was perhaps the best way to make him understand.

"All right, then. Go ahead."

.((0)).

Tom's remark had not been flippant. He had meant it then, and he believed it more thoroughly now. Dumbledore had never liked him. He remembered that day at the orphanage, the way he looked at him when he discovered the things Tom had hidden in the closet. Like he had done something so wrong it implied he was ignorant of some fundamental truth. His entire time in the wizarding world was characterized by an invisible fear that this fundamental truth existed, that he was lacking something that everyone else had.

When he'd read about the murder of his biological family, the buried fear had surfaced. Hadn't he watched his father and thought about how much easier it would be if he had never existed? Hadn't he contemplated murdering him in order to mask his heritage? Hadn't there been simple bloodlust when he'd watched his father all those years ago, and complete disgust at the identity of the other side of his family? Perhaps that fundamental truth was inside of him, and he was blind to it. There had even been not a few moments where he wondered if it might have been him, if he only didn't remember it. He thought of the diary, still punctured at last viewing, and what Hermione had said about being possessed.

Who was clever enough to frame him? He himself was, wasn't he? But so was Dumbledore. Maybe the fundamental truth Dumbledore seemed to see had nothing to do with ethics, nothing to do with love, and everything to do with all the unanswered questions Tom had about Dumbledore. Why had he never confronted Grindelwald? Tom knew him equal to the task in his bones. Why had he disguised the conversations he had with Hermione? Why had he let his other conversations be heard? Why had he sent Knauss back to be killed by Grindelwald when he gave so many other people as many chances as they wanted? And, most importantly, most mysteriously, why had he told Grindelwald about Tom?

Tom looked at the door behind which Dumbledore was talking with Mione. He eyed the bowl of sweets on Dumbledore's desk and the covered cage in which Dumbeldore's pet phoenix slept. He didn't want to have a conversation with Dumbledore at all. For the first time in his life, he felt afraid.

.((0)).

Dumbledore leaned back, a troubled look on his face, while Hermione recovered her composure. Having Dumbledore survey the contents of her action, with no exclusion and no explanations, was hard to bear. He cast a blind eye to her and Tom's trysts—he knew about them and had no need to pry. The reason for them was what he was looking for.

"…So, you now believe it was the diary's possession of Tom that caused him to take the path that would lead to his becoming Lord Voldemort," he said quietly.

"The only thing that keeps me from being certain is the deaths of the Riddles."

"And what about Myrtle, and his attempts to kill that Malfoy boy? Do his actions not trouble you?"

"Yes, of course… I think that when the diary possessed him, it changed him. It made him realize the true nature of what he is becoming. Was becoming."

"He still used an Imperius on five of the students, and has killed since his change."

"You mean in France? When he killed Grindelwald, you mean?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, I do mean."

"Did you tell Grindelwald about Tom?"

"I did."

"Why?"

Dumbledore gave her a penetrating glance, and nodded. "As I said, there are things you do not know. And some of those things I have been unsure of." He stood, and reached to the top of his nearby bookshelf. He retrieved a glass box with a glowing orb in it. "There was a prophecy."

Hermione's skin prickled. "Like with Harry."

Dumbledore nodded. "Funnily enough, it was Cassandra Trelawny." He opened the box. The glowing blue orb formed itself into the figure of a tall, willowy lady, sitting very straight up in a chair and looking into her tea.

_After night is told that it will die_

_The darkness will guess what its doom will be_

_And in death its deeds will multiply_

_In the form of the ax that cut down the tree._

Dumbledore looked from the figure to Hermione. "It was you who made me certain it was Tom, interestingly. Once I knew he would in fact become like Grindelwald, I knew I could cause the prophecy to unfold if I told Grindelwald of his fate. Of course, time is unsure, unfixed, mutable. It has been changed before. It may be changed again. The stars themselves have changed of late, have they not?"

Hermione nodded.

"He saved you, as well. He saved the person sent to kill him. Perhaps his deeds will not multiply—"

"The Are Dlog," said Hermione. "He will become Voldemort somehow."

"Yes, that's true. Perhaps it will restore the diary?"

"If it's not already restored."

Dumbledore scrutinized a fingernail. "Yes… I suppose that is the first avenue we must purusue, in investigating the Riddles' deaths." He was silent, thinking.

"Professor?"

"Hmmm?"

"What if he didn't?"

"Do you know," he said, still staring at a fingernail, "I've a fair idea that he didn't. He couldn't possibly have orchestrated everything that has happened so far. Of course we must prove what happened, but…"

"If he didn't?" Hermione prompted.

"If he didn't, we have no reason to kill the poor boy." He sighed. "And it seems that you have made alternate plans ready." He gave his fingernail a particularly harsh look. "There is something, however, we must consider before anything else," said Dumbledore, and then waited a long time as if for her to respond, which she did.

"What is it?"

"How to kill Mr. Riddle if we must."

Hermione was silent.

"He has already taken the stone."

She just nodded.

"If we render him unconscious for three months, the Sorcerer's Stone will no longer have an effect on him. You can take him to the future then."

"After three months?" said Hermione dubiously.

"We do have a time machine. We can shunt him three months forward and take him back to us."

Hermione shrugged helplessly. "Yes. I suppose, if we—" but working out what to do, considering the possibility of killing him, and he was an entirely different person now than who he had been before. He probably didn't do it, she told herself sternly. Don't torture yourself until it's necessary. Believe the lie if it's a lie. "Whatever will work, will work," she said finally.

.((0)).

Tom didn't look at Dumbledore as he walked into his side office. He took his seat calmly, arranged his robes, and composed his face. Then he watched Dumbledore and waited.

Dumbledore watched him back. It took a long time for him to say anything. "I believe you, Tom. I believe that or I believe you have a genius for lying."

Tom raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

"Miss Potter believes you."

"That's not her real name," Tom said evenly. "Who's lying now?"

"Do you believe it can be proven that someone else committed the crime?"

"Yes."

"Then I will look. I will give you time."

Tom laughed.

Dumbledore steepled his fingers together and peered over them at Tom. "Would you like to say something to me, Tom?"

Tom glared at him. "You did it."

"I did it? Did what, exactly."

"Killed my family. To make Mione believe I did it. So that there's not choice but to kill me, just in case I'm evil after all."

Dumbledore sighed. "I've never understood your hatred of me. There's no use arguing with you about it. Until there is irrevocable proof that links one wizard to the crime, we must maintain our opinions as best we can in the face of adversity."

"So be it," said Tom, shifting in his chair. "That about covers it, doesn't it? I thought we were going to be talking to Dippet. I thought he was bound to be terribly interested in all this time travel and murder and secret-keeping."

"As you wish. And I would like the diary."

"She told you about the diary?"

"She told me everything, Tom. And I would like to see the diary."

"To see if I was possessed?"

"Yes, actually. Shall we go to Dippet's office or shall I call him here?"

"Let's go there, and take Mione along, see if we can't get anything out of the both of you somehow." Tom stood brusquely, eager to leave. He opened the door into Dumbledore's office, where Mione was waiting. She looked up at Tom; he didn't sit down. "Come on," he said. "We're going to Dippet."

"Dippet?" she said, appalled. "Absolutely not. We _can't_."

"And why not, Miss Potter?" asked Dumbledore.

"If he knows it will endanger everything. Will the Are Dlog take care of that, or will Dippet always know?"

"The Are Dlog will reset everything on its course."

"What's the Are Dlog?" asked Tom in between purposeful glances at the door.

"What if he does something to prevent us from going forward?" asked Hermione.

"He will not," said Dumbledore confidently. "Not if he learns the entire story."

"But—" said Hermione.

"No buts," said Dumbledore. "Mr. Riddle insists."

"I do insist," he asserted, his eyes burning. "I'm tired of all this subterfuge."

"Are you?" Dumbledore queried mildly, and Tom stalked out of his office. Dumbledore accompanied him amiably, and Hermione had no choice but to follow.

.((0)).

Tom burst into Headmaster Dippet's office, causing the startled man to drop his cup of tea all over his papers. The man passed his wand over the mess and cleaned it with a spell. Before he finished, Tom was saying, "Dumbledore is trying to frame me for the deaths of the Riddles. He killed them, I know he did it."

Headmaster Dippet's eyebrows well nigh disappeared. "Really, one sometimes hears one outrageous accusation, but two in a row! I hate to disappoint you—" At this point Dumbledore appeared at the door, and Dippet continued "—and you, but both accusations are baseless. I have discovered the killer this very night, prowling on the grounds of the Riddle Mansion, looking for a locket. It seems he killed the entire family because he believed they'd stolen it." Hermione had entered by now and was listening with shock and elation. "Inbred wizard by the name of Marvolo."

"No, that can't be. He's dead," said Tom. "I thought he died in prison."

"We have exhumed the remains, the Ministry Aurors and I. There was a house-elf in his grave, who seemed to have imbibed a great deal of Polyjuice Potion."

"No," said Tom. Then, very firmly, he repeated himself. "No. It wasn't him."

Dippet cocked his head. Professor Dumbledore was giving him an exasperated look. "Why do you insist on turning away help when it is at hand?" he said.

Tom turned to Dumbledore. "It was you, I know it was you. Using a mirror to divide your spell five ways, that's like you, that's not like some ignorant half-breed like my grandfather."

Hermione shook her head. Was this what had been going on in Dumbledore's office? Tom's eyes were fevered. So he hadn't been joking, after all. "Just, what's the proof, Headmaster? Have you verified that it is in fact Marvolo? Has he confessed to the crime?"

"We've used veritaserum and legilimency. It appears he was approaching the house when he saw the family dining and decided to attack through a window. He was looking for a locket, as I said, which remains missing."

Tom was running his hand through his hair and his eyes were closed. Hermione gave him a troubled look. "Where is he now?"

"At the Ministry, awaiting processing. He'll be in Azkaban soon enough. May I ask what it was that inspired these—er, ravings?" Dippet looked expectantly at Tom.

Tom gave a disgusted sigh and turned on his heel, eager to leave the Headmaster's office. Hermione, standing near the door, prevented him. "Wait. Just wait." She looked at Dumbledore. "This means we can finish the project the way _we_ wanted to, doesn't it, Professor Dumbledore?" she asked.

He gave her a puzzled smile. "Yes, of course it does. And I do believe—that this Mr. Marvolo is responsible for… your loss, Tom."

Tom gave a distracted glance at the mention of his name and turned to go again. Hermione threw a look behind her at Dumbledore and followed Tom out of the hall. "Tom," she hissed. "What in Merlin's name are you doing?"

He whirled on her in a fury. "I don't care what you think, I'm sure of it!" He turned again, walking down the hall in long, angry strides. Hermione hurried after him.

She put a hand on his arm. "I don't understand. They've found out who's done it this time—" Tom shook her arm off. "Tom what does it matter? You heard Dumbledore, we can go back like we've been planning, he told me so in the meeting."

"He tells everyone what they want to hear," muttered Tom.

"Why can't we just wait until we go back?"

"Because we won't go back if he did it, if he's been planning this whole time to kill me. Don't you see? He's just pretending. He's going to do something, I know he is, and then we won't be able to—"

"Tom, stop," said Hermione sternly, pulling on his arm. He stopped and took her arm harshly and pulled her close to him.

"You refuse to acknowledge the possibility because you need him—"

"Tom," said Hermione, her face inches from his. "I'm to set the coordinates tomorrow. I can set them for sooner rather than later. We can leave before Dumbledore expects. We'll still have the Grail. We still know where Harry is. And Dumbledore will have an extremely slim opportunity to derail our plans."

Tom regarded her for a moment, the fury in his eyes being replaced slowly by a calculating look. "Yes, let's go soon. Let's go tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow?" asked Hermione, hardly daring to breathe. It was so, so soon.

"Tomorrow," he said, and kissed her firmly on the lips. He laughed into her lips, a harsh, bitter, tired laugh, the kind of laugh that comes before some desperate move. He pressed against her, pulled her against him, as if he couldn't get close enough.

"We're in a hallway," Hermione mumbled into his lips.

"Where should we go, then?"

"Let's go to my room. I'd like to spend my last night in a Ravenclaw room."

"Slytherin too dark for you?"

"It always has been, if you must know."

"At least I was never a Gryffindor."

She smiled, and clasped his hand, and they walked down the corridor together.


	33. Chapter 33

Hello. This is the first of the last three chapters. Only two more. Stop crying, there's a sequel. I'm going to TRY try try try to finish this in a week and a half and I'll post the next two chaps as soon as I finish them. Darkness-Lightness—Maybe someone's lying. It's possible no one's lying and there's another explanation. I won't say anything, and I'm sure you'll be even more confused by the end of this chap. SailorHecate—The best part of writing Tom is straddling the line between him and Voldemort, making him sympathetic but still recognizable as someone who would've become Voldemort if not for.. well, who knows. Maybe he will become Voldemort after all. I'm not saying. Blindfaithoperadiva—you know, reviewers shape this story a lot. Maybe I was responding to suspicious reviewers. Ocean Reflection: the next chapter is the dun dun Dun chapter. You'll see what I mean.

.((0)).

It was hot; there were blankets covering them completely. The backs of Tom's thighs were slick with sweat. She woke up kissing him, her legs twined around him, pushing against him. They both woke up at the same time, prompted by the same dreams, into each other. His skin was salty. He bit her neck and licked her breast, buried his head in her stomach and she buried her hands in his hair, as if it was the last time. She brought him up to kiss him again and they kissed for a long time, and then he turned her over onto her back and pulled her into place against him. She placed a foot against his shoulder. The covers were tented down from where his head kept them in place. He pressed his finger to her lips and then covered her foot with his hand, grasping it as they moved together, concurrently. She bit her lower lip and he smiled seeing it, and she saw him smile, and he lowered himself, pressing his stomach against hers and his chest against her breasts and his lips against hers. A muted light fell onto his face as he thrust against her and Hermione gasped, and his eyes locked with hers. A cry half-strangled in Tom's throat and Hermione's face heated with his breath, and she lost her breath, grasped at it as it left her, carrying her up, against Tom again and up, lifting her halfway out of her body and then she made a suffocated noise, felt a pleasure keen enough to make her cry. Tom tangled his mouth in hers, hoisting her as her legs failed to find purchase in the sheets under them. She let him take her, hold her against him, guide himself into her, her breath still fluttering just out of her reach, tears breaking from her eyes and salting their kiss. He was moaning into her mouth, kissing the trail of tears up to her eyes and kissing them, and finally her breath returned to her. He told her to be with him, to take him with her, to take the Stone, and she said yes to everything, and then she couldn't say anything and neither could he, his voice frozen in his throat as he froze in an arc, eyes glazed and red. Hermione came with him, and his red eyes dropped down to her, alien in the moment before they returned to black. She worried, for a moment, about the eyes, about the wild and unfounded suspicion of Dumbledore. She let the worries pass. She was tired of worrying, tired of everything, and it would all be over soon. She sunk back into sleep upon this deeply comforting thought.

She woke up before Tom, just before the light started to creep into the sky, and it was completely still. The Forbidden Forest was impossibly silent; even the air did not move. Hermione looked out of her window, watching the slow crawl of color across the sky. The light was pale as it came in. Hermione opened her eyes and reconciled herself to being awake. Tomorrow. Today. Tonight. She looked over at Tom. The white light made his skin unnaturally pale, and the contrast between it and the dark slash of his eyebrows was striking. He wasn't one of those people who lost their expression and succumbed to innocence in sleep. Even unconscious, there was a thin line in between his eyebrows, a curl to his mouth that couldn't be attributed to the lopsided scar Grindelwald had given him.

Hermione stepped out of her bed. There was a lot to be done. Her mind was already organizing the day's plans. She'd have to pack her library; that would be the most necessary thing to bring with them. There was the Grail to consider. She needed the Defense Diagram, the Invisibility Cloak, the Marauder's Map. They would need magical supplies, potion ingredients and food supplies, money. There was of course the configuration of the time machine. Half a dozen half-formed thoughts waited in line, and she decided abruptly that the most important thing this morning was coffee.

Accordingly, she stopped in the dining hall just long enough to drink one quick cup and pour herself another, which she took with her and headed towards the library. She needed to make a list of things to pick up in Diagon Alley, and she wanted those lists to be resource-book complete.

First she headed to the potions section, hiding her steaming mug of coffee from the librarian as she disappeared into the rows of books. Potions was, fittingly enough for her experience, in a murky corner of the library far away from the other sections and enclaves of study tables. She walked down the rows of books, turning left and left again as she progressed, though History of Magic books, and the Classics section. The placards on the three narrow rows of bookshelves that contained potions volumes were stained and gray. Hermione walked down the row marked G-Q, intending to find a copy of Most Potente Potions, which she hadn't brought with her since it was a third-year textbook. Still, she remembered in it the comprehensive list of potion ingredients that she had used to dictate her stocks every year. She wanted to make sure she had all of them. She walked down the row of books, noticing a study area at the end of the shelves.

At the end of the row of books, in a semi-secluded area populated only by one small table and a chair, sat Alicia. Her white hair was streaming down her back and she had her face in one hand. Hermione almost began to turn around in order to avoid her when she saw that Alicia's hand was shaking. She remembered that Alicia barely remembered any of their interactions, and certainly none of the uncomfortable ones. She chanced a closer look. Alicia was sobbing, quietly, her eyes closed and her face disguised by her hand, only the shaking of the hand betraying the fact that she was crying. She recalled the dark stains under Alicia's eyes of late, and wondered at what Tom had done to her. There was scarcely time to query him about it now, but her mind began to put forth a plan that had been unconsciously forming ever since her confrontation with Alicia and the Slytherin boys. She had forgotten about the Alicia's Pensieve. She added another task to her day's chores.

.((0)).

There was a flash of green in the side of his dreamtime vision, and he heard a familiar voice, one that he had never before heard aloud.

-Hello, Tom.

-Voldemort. It's been some time.

-It will happen exactly as it did before.

-Have you been here all this time?

-There is no such place as here. There is no division between here and there, you and the world, the inside and the outside. You and I.

-Have you grown philosophical in defeat?

-I am not defeated.

-…

-You know that I will come back, in some form, in the future. That will happen even if you succeed. You know I will crawl out of the pages again, and find some head to make a home in. Who knows? Maybe I'll do something to the mudblood.

-You know who she is now. You know who she's descended from.

-Yes, she is the same as you, really, with the muggles and the inbreds. As was Salazar, as you know. Only they know the true taste of power. Only they can prevent you from greatness.

-Trying to crawl into my head again?

-I don't need to. I came from your head in the first place; what made me is still in you.

-I destroyed you.

-Look at me.

Tom sat up rapidly. His heart was pounding. His skin was bone dry. He had to get out of bed. He had to find the diary. It was today. They were going today. Tom began to pull his clothes on and caught sight of himself in the mirror. His eyes were shockingly red. It wasn't a flash or a gleam. It was permanent. He sank to the floor and sat, staring helplessly at the mirror.

"Am I human?" he asked himself. He shook his head. The diary. He stood up abruptly, so quickly that black spots opened in irises around his vision. He pulled on his robes without bothering to put on his shirt. He left Hermione's dormitories without any disguise, pausing only to hold his wand against each eye and intone softly, "Masque." Mere luck prevented him from encountering anyone before he exited the Ravenclaw Tower.

He hurried to the Slytherin Dungeons, his impatience making him annoyed with everything he encountered on the way. First-years didn't look where they were going, groups of giggling girls failed to disperse and he was forced to stalk around them. It took him an age to reach the Dungeons. He caught sight of Malfoy sitting in a chair in the Slytherin common room. He was staring blankly ahead of him and didn't acknowledge Tom's presence. Why should he? At this point, he didn't even know he was a half-blood, much less than that he had been forced to rally together Tom's gang, that he'd been Imperiused, jinxed, and hexed by him. Tom expelled a dismissive breath and headed for the Head Boy's chambers.

Tom entered his room as if he was entering a stranger's room. He hadn't spent much time here at all, not since the diary. That night descended on him again, with those bloody visions, that wish to kill and destroy. The knife that was inside him yet. He had almost succumbed to it. He had grown tired of fighting, that night. Mione had had to pull him out to help her. If she hadn't kissed him, that night, he might not have won. But he hadn't given up. He'd held on and let her go and kill his perfect double. He remembered that clearly, remembered holding on even as she plunged blindly towards the Basilisk. The diary was locked in the bottom drawer of his desk. He hadn't looked at it since he'd interred it there after that night.

"Alohamora," he said, aiming his wand at the drawer. He opened it once it unlocked. For a moment, he thought he saw it whole, shop-new. It was just a momentary vision. The book was punctured, in its upper-left hand corner, the pages and cover still stained with his avatar's inky blood. He stared at it. "Dumbledore wants you," he said. "I suppose I should oblige him."

.((0)).

Hermione rushed to the glass and brass entrance of Gringott's, an unwieldy package in her hand and her satchel filled to bursting with the contents of her trip to Diagon Alley. There was a portkey from the Leaky Cauldron to Hogsmeade in half and hour, and she wasn't sure she'd have enough time to get back from her errand here. She allowed the security trolls to inspect her, taking all the usual post-Grindelwald precautions, which were, needless to say, sparse. She waited impatiently in queue. There were only two wizards in front of her, but one of them seemed to be engaged in a lengthy discussion with the goblin at the Bank's cubicle. She sighed and willed herself to be calm. If she missed the portkey, she'd just have to make her excuses to Dumbledore and configure the Time Machine later. Sure, she'd have hardly any time to pack and make sure she hadn't left anything behind, but it could be done. It wasn't impossible. A cubicle opened up and Hermione walked purposefully towards it.

"I'd like to deposit an item and leave it in trust for someone," she said before the goblin had time to greet her.

"Of course. Name?"

"Mione Potter."

"Wand, please."

Hermione handed her wand to him promptly. It didn't matter that Mione Potter didn't exist; a wand's signature was the same as a social security number in the wizarding world. Despite Gringot's reputation for security, it was remarkably easy to open multiple accounts under false names. Gringot's goblins only cared about customer satisfaction; if customers wanted security, they would find a dragon to guard their bank vault. If customers wanted to launder money and engage in arbitrage, so be it. The goblin handed her back her wand. If it was the same one she'd had since she was eleven Hermione might not be doing this favor for Alicia. But she had acquired a new wand, one that wasn't registered to Hermione Granger, so she felt safe opening this trust.

"What is the item?"

Hermione set the item on the desk. She uncovered it. It was Alicia's silver and pink Penseive.

"When should the item accrue to the recipient?"

"In ten years time," said Hermione. She wasn't sure how much good it would do; Voldemort would have returned to England by that time. It wasn't so much that she wanted Alicia to succeed, to save the Slytherin boys from the fates forged by their own worst parts. But Alicia had tried so hard to change her fate, had almost succeeded. It just wasn't fair to blind her to the discoveries she's worked so hard to make. She had to at least give her a chance to take her fate back. She sighed. The Are Dlog would probably prevent it from doing any good. But, it was finished. The Pensieve was in Gringot's hands now, and she had a portkey to catch.

.((0)).

"Mr. Riddle. A pleasant surprise." Professor Dumbledore stepped aside from the door frame and gestured to his room. "Please come in."

Tom didn't particularly want to go into Professor Dumbledore's office, but curiosity prevented him from declining. He stepped forward and brusquely thrust the punctured diary towards Dumbledore. "Here it is," he said.

Dumbledore turned the book over in his hands. "Well, I dare say I needn't see this anyway, since we've found the true culprit of the crime." He gingerly opened the book; the pages made papery unsticking sounds as he rifled through the book. "A remarkable thing." He looked up. "Would you excuse me? I'd like to have a look at this in my laboratory for a moment."

Tom waved his hand, still standing. Dumbledore walked eagerly towards his office, calling after him, "Do sit down, if you please."

The door shut behind him. Tom looked around Dumbledore's office. He couldn't resist the compulsion to search for evidence of his suspicion. He rifled quickly through the paperwork on his desk, and chanced a look at the Pensieve in his cabinet—but that was altogether too risky of an examination to make. He opened a drawer to Dumbledore's desk—unlocked—and sifted through candy and bits of parchment. It was here that he came across a letter addressed: "Mione." It was in a muggle-style envelope, sealed with a bit a wax—a strange thing, comprising medieval muggle methods and modern muggle artifacts. He looked to the door, then the envelope, and muttered a hasty unsticking charm. The wax and the glue of the envelope did not unseal. He heard the doorknob of Dumbledore's office turn and quickly pocketed the letter. Clearly, he thought as Dumbledore walked back into the room, the letter had been sealed so that it could only be opened by the person it was intended for.

"How on earth did you think of doing that? A diary is an unusual place for an avatar."

Tom shrugged, giving him an impassive shrug.

"I take it you still think I murdered your family."

He said nothing. He saw no reason to lie.

Dumbledore shook his head and looked at Tom with a sad look on his face. "I know you really think so, Tom. I don't know what you hope to accomplish with the accusation—certainly you realize no one could believe it, not with your father on trial at the Ministry. But I know you are doing it because you feel control slipping from your hands." He paused. "I know what's going on. Rest assured, I will find a way to ensure that the future happens the way it should."

"What are you on about?"

"Continue to pretend if you like."

"Pretend, eh? Is that your take? That would be what you would say if you were innocent." Tom shook his head. "There's absolutely no point engaging in further conversation." He stood.

"No, I don't think there is," agreed Dumbledore.


	34. Chapter 34

Hey guys, I'm sorry, truly I am. I had the worst vacation in the history of vacations and it left me with a serious blockage. The good news is-- only one more chapter, which I'm almost finished with, and the blockage seems to be unblocked. In more good news, at least for some of you guys, in the sequel there seems to be a kinda D/Hr thing on top of the T/Hr thing. Whaddaya think?

Dear Myself

.((0)).

Hermione pushed through the underbrush of the trail she and Professors Dumbledore and O'Bleeke used to make their way to the Time Machine. In her own time, the path was entirely obscured, and the lack of passage had resulted in scratched legs and a torn nightgown. The path wasn't considerably better off now, and Hermione tended to wear her dragon-hide boots Ron had given as a Christmas gift for these outings. She supposed they'd have to be packed as well. Who knew what forests they would make their way through when they returned to the future? If, that is, if everything went according to plan.

She remembered the look Tom wore in his eyes when he shot those men in France, in the Room of Requirement. When he shot Jean. When he killed Grindelwald. It was the look of someone morbidly fascinated with killing—there was some kind of strange fear behind it, as if he could repulse death by causing others—and he had, hadn't he? Wasn't that what killing so often was, when you came right down to it, hoping to preserve your life for longer by sacrificing another? Or hoping to gain immortality by the sacrifice. That look of combined fear and cold resolve was the one he had worn when he strode into Dippet's office and accused Dumbledore of murder.

It had shocked Hermione into almost a denial. It was so against the evidence, so seemingly unfounded and unprompted—he had made it into a _joke_ before he'd said it seriously. The solution that immediately presented itself was to escape Dumbledore's presence altogether and as soon as possible. An early departure in the time machine was a ready escape. Hermione was to set the configuration of the time machine with the help of Dumbledore and O'Bleeke. She wouldn't have to hide the date of their arrival in the future from either man, but she would have to find a way to alter the date of their departure. She half-stepped, half-climbed over the overlarge gnarled root of an eldritch pine, and broke into the clearing she and Dumbledore and O'Bleeke had used to build the time machine. She was the first one there, and was alone. She still wasn't used to seeing it whole, so very nearly ready before her eyes. All that was required… was little more than a nudge.

Professor O'Bleeke came bustling through the underbrush moments later, his face red with stress; he had never liked coming into the Forbidden Forest to work on their project, despite the safety of the path they had established. In fact, this might be the first time Hermione had seen him come without Dumbledore's company. She greeted him cordially and impersonally and he reciprocated. Professor O'Bleeke looked at the time machine with obvious pride.

"We've reinvented the wheel, to be sure, but what a wheel," he said, fairly breathless. "I wonder if it will be here tomorrow."

"It will be here for more than fifty years," said Hermione.

"How do you know that?"

"It's an obvious implication of the invention. It connects two disparate times by using the disparate time between them, between the creation and the use of the time machine. It probably doesn't survive its use." Which meant that in the future, the person she had been would not have an opportunity to go back into time. The other Hermione would have no reason to go back, to leave Ron and Harry. The trio wouldn't be broken, even though it would no longer be hers. It was a nice thought.

There was another disturbance in the forest and the two of them turned to see Dumbledore making his way towards their clearing.

"Hallo!" he called from a distance, and quickened his stride. By the time he reached them O'Bleeke was inspecting the controls of the time machine. "What do you say?" he called. "Shall we bind the times to the projecting spell or use them propulsively?"

"Propulsively," Hermione said quickly, and definitively. Binding the dates to the time projection spell would force her to dismantle and rebuild the spell. If they used the dates to propel the time projection spell, she could theoretically use any date to start the time machine's engine, so to speak.

"Well, the spellwork is more complicated, but it is more foolproof," said Dumbledore.

Hermione didn't allow her relief to show on her face. Instead she joined the two men in brainstorming a framework for a three-part instantiation of the propulsive spell. Each of them incanted as they stood over the engine of the time machine. Numbers in one panel showed the date—whichever date the time machine could potentially travel to. The numbers were connected to a series of wheels and gears; they connected a circuit between the date mechanism and the time propeller. The circuit grew narrow towards one end, concentrating the exponentially released propulsive potential of the scheduled date.

Hermione came to herself as she stood inside the Time Machine by herself, Professors Dumbledore and O'Bleeke outside discussing the few loose ends that remained to the project. She hadn't realized until now how great the project was—it was possibly the greatest thing she'd been involved in during her life, and that included fighting against Lord Voldemort. As Professor O'Bleeke said, what a wheel it had been. Hermione grinned and whispered to herself, "I'm one third inventor or the world's first large-capacity time machine." She was eighteen years old.

.((0)).

Hermione pulled off her dragonhide boots and placed them into her satchel. It was the same one she'd used to pack her life into in the future and to bring out in the past. It had the same set of complicated Transfigurative spells on them that allowed the bag to swallow a library. She was almost finished packing it for what was hopefully her last trip through time. There was a knock on the door. She opened it to Tom. He strode in and sat on her bed. He had a bag with him, his school satchel, which probably had Tranfiguration spells on it similar to Hermione's own.

"I'm finished."

"I'm nearly done, and I want a once-over after I finish."

"We have all night," said Tom. He leaned back. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have accused Dumbledore."

"Good," said Hermione, relieved that he'd given up his unaccountable ideas.

"Now he knows I'm looking. He's going to do something. We'll have to be careful, tonight. Did you finish configuring the time machine?"

Hermione stared at Tom, honestly worried now that he'd stated the case so bald-facedly. She was specifically worried that his obsession with Dumbledore would continue in the future, where he was after all, Headmaster of Hogwarts. She hoped not, but it didn't bode well.

"You don't believe me."

"Of course not. We've established that. It's _Dumbledore_."

"It's Dumbledore, yes. The most powerful wizard now that Grindelwald is gone." He frowned in thought as he said it. "Maybe that's why."

"Why what?"

"Why he used me to get rid of Grindelwald."

"Tom—" said Hermione helplessly.

"Do you think he was in the right when he led Grindelwald to me?"

"I'm not sure if it was him so much as it was Alicia Silversmith. And anyway, he knew you would defeat him. There was a prophecy."

"A prophecy?" Tom's eyebrow arched in derision. "Which holds so much weight in the face of all this time travel."

"It might," said Hermione. "The last time I tried to change time, it turned out it was the way it had been all along and I just had the wrong picture of what was happening the first time around," she shrugged and caught Tom's eye. "I'll never forget that. Pure determinism."

"The stars themselves have changed."

"Yes," she admitted. "That's what gives me hope."

"Tell me about this prophecy."

"It was made by Cassandra Trelawny."

"Rather a run-of-the-mill seer, isn't she? Famous, yes. Famously cryptic."

"It turned out to be true," said Hermione. "Maybe that's because it was a real prophecy."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it's true because Dumbledore heard it and acted on its impetus."

"Well, even if that's why, does it make him wrong?" Hermione asked. "I mean, you can easily see why he'd do that." She paused. "Or at least, I can."

"Actually, I _can_ easily see why he'd do that. He'd bring about the downfall of Grindelwald without any chance of harm to himself, without even any attention on him. No one would think of Dumbledore as anything more than a kindly old helping hand, not even you."

"That's not how I think of Dumbledore," said Hermione.

"What do you think of him?"

"It's complicated," said Hermione, thinking of Harry, and what was right, and what was easy. And how similar to Tom his position was.

"Explain it to me."

"I can't. We don't have any time for this, Tom. I mean, listen to yourself," she said desperately. "What you're saying is against all the evidence, not to mention all the possible intentions, and your own interest. I can't understand why you persist in it." She ran a hand through her curly hair. "I need to know that it'll be all right when we get back, that you won't try to pursue some vendetta against Dumbledore."

Tom listened to her and then turned his attention to a wall in front of his in a very focused way. "Of course," he said. "I can ignore him, so long as there's no extenuating circumstances."

"Like what?" Hermione demanded testily.

"Well, for instance, if he tries to kill me. In the future."

"Honestly," she exclaimed wearily, shaking her head. Perhaps it was like Sirius and Snape or Ron and Draco—a baseless, mutual enmity for which there was no solution. "I just want to go _home_," she whispered, more to herself than to Tom. She could feel him move closer to her, and then he pressed a solid hand on her shoulder.

"Let's go, then," he said softly. She looked up with half a smile on her face and saw him looking at her with something like pity. Home was gone to both of them—but for Tom there had never been one. In his eyes was the price she was paying for him, and they both knew it.

Hermione stood again, and stuffed a copy of news articles from 1945 into the satchel. The reports hadn't changed. They still showed no arrests, no suspects in the Riddle's deaths. The name Marvolo Gaunt was still absent from the copy. Perhaps the future contained a copy of what happened to Marvolo Gaunt. Or perhaps they really had changed time, after all, and this would remain as a testament to the way things were before the change.

"Oh, hell," exclaimed Tom, slapping a hand to his forehead. "I nearly forgot. Forgive me—we won't talk about Dumbledore. But I found this in his office." He pulled out the letter that was addressed to her.

"Did you get it for me or for you?"

"There's a sealing charm on it. Of course I tried to read it and replace it. I don't want Professor Dumbledore to have any reason to come after us.

Hermione looked at the letter warily, and then at Tom. She shrugged. "Let's have done with it," she said, and tore open the letter. Two sheets of parchment rolled out. One was smaller, and had only a few sentences on it. The other was older, more care-worn; Hermione had seen it before, in Dumbledore's office. "Dear Myself," it began. Hermione shifted it in her hand as she read the shorter note first.

"Mione,

I have struggled with myself for a good while now as to whether I should give you the letter I received the first night you came to the school. After all, it was not addressed to you. However, I feel the end coming soon, and I am not sure I can do all that the letter asks me to. I simply ask you to read it, and draw your own conclusions.

--Professor Dumbledore

Her scalp prickled as she handed the note to Tom and took the other, longer letter into her hands. She felt she shouldn't let Tom read it, that it was sure to be concerned with him, with all of this. It didn't matter; Tom was preoccupied reading the other note. She read the letter quickly, as thoroughly as possible for the speed. She read as if her life depended on it.

Dear Myself,

Before you is seated a blood-spattered young woman named Hermione Granger. She is a Gryffindor student from the year 1997. She has lost her parents and many friends in a magical war which will outshine even Grindelwald's reign in scope (about that—he will not last the year; the prophecy will come to pass). It will be led by the greatest dark wizard in centuries. He is known to Hermione as Lord Voldemort. He is known to you as Tom Riddle. She has come in order to bring an incarnation of his younger self into the future, since in the future he is immortal, and cannot be killed. It is prophesied that only one person in the wizarding world is capable of killing him. His name is Harry Potter. He is her best friend.

All of the suspicions you have felt about the boy over the years are true, and more than that. He has killed fellow students, as you suspected when the Chamber of Secrets was first opened. He will kill his own family, and will lead his peers into a life of death and destruction in the interests of his own power. What you see in the boy now is nothing compared to what he will come to be; he is capable of far more terrible things than you currently suspect. You have allowed your half-hopes and disinclination to involvement to turn your head from Tom. This cannot be undone. However, no matter what happens, no matter what truths or seeming truths come to light, _do not trust him_.

This may seem an odd warning tonight; after all, you don't trust Tom Riddle now, so why should you be warned against it? I suppose I must tell you what I know of the story. The first time, this is what happened: the first time, you did not write a letter to yourself. When Hermione Granger came to you the first time, you spent quite a bit of time over the Penseive with her to verify her story. She told you she needed to build a Time Machine; in order to aid her in her project, you apprenticed her to your time's Arithmancy Professor, William O'Bleeke. It turned out to be a fruitful alliance, although it is best not to tell Professor O'Bleeke too much. The project, the invention and building of the Time Machine, will take months. Do not grow impatient; it can be done. It already has been done, once before. Trust in Ms. Granger's instincts; she is has a rare genius for magic—and, I hope, a bright future.

My history books inform me that in the days of Ms. Granger's arrival, there was a skirmish in Alsace. Of course, I remember this small battle. In fact, I sent her back to the date I did in order for the dates of the action and her arrival to coincide. Also, I remember her arriving at this date, which means I must have had the original idea the first time I sent her. Tell Headmaster Dippet and young Tom that she was caught in the crossfire between Resistance fighters and Grindelwald's fighters. Hopefully Tom will be satisfied with this explanation for longer than I remember. Also, she mustn't go by her real name. The last time, I asked her to assume a shortening of her name—Mione, as well as a pureblood name. I think she will be very pleased to take the name Potter.

The first time she came back, you noticed that Mr. Riddle seemed to seek her out. You trusted in Ms. Granger's ability to look after herself. After all, this boy would grow into the man responsible for her family's death, and for that of her friends. You didn't realize how far Mr. Riddle's charms are capable of extending. By the end, they had extended even to yourself. Even now, I fail to understand how Ms. Granger came to love Tom Riddle, but he somehow accomplished it. When I discovered the nature of their relationship the first time, I asked Hermione's permission to use legilimency on her in order to understand what had happened. It seems she believed that Tom had become possessed by something he had invented—an avatar of sorts that he embedded in a diary. She believed they had overcome the possession together when it threatened her life. It is not an untrue story. I inspected the diary, as well as Tom's mind. It was indeed contaminated by some other source.

However, they had never completely freed Tom from the possession. I am not sure what Tom Riddle is—I am not sure if he is the possession entire or if some aspect of his personality believes himself to be free of the possession. The first time, I told this to Hermione, and I believed that she believed me. Perhaps she didn't. Perhaps she believed me and thought she could still free Tom Riddle from the monster he had made himself into. This is where my knowledge of the story ends. All I know is that I sent Hermione and an unconscious Tom into the future according to a new plan, earlier than we had previously decided, in the room Harry was being kept in. When they returned, Hermione was dead and Voldemort manifest in Tom Riddle.

I can think only of one explanation. Hermione became involved with the centaurs in an attempt to change our original plan. You see, by the time she went back Harry was in the middle of a battlefield, tied to a stake. There was little chance of his success. She wished to go back to an earlier time, when she could save him from suffering and give him a chance to kill Voldemort. She succeeded, but the centaurs grew suspicious of her and attempted to kill her. They would have if Tom Riddle had not been there. When he healed Hermione in the Forbidden Forest, he forged a powerful bond to her; perhaps this is why he healed her instead of letting her expire. Surely, this bond is what caused her to put the future at risk for the sake of saving Tom Riddle from himself. I have tried to discourage her from speaking to the centaurs, but I was not prepared to reveal enough of the story in order to discourage her.

There are now two Voldemorts in the world. It is a mercy the younger one has decided to take advantage of the fact and remain in hiding. However, they are communicating with each other; they are allies. Otherwise I could give Hermione little hope of success. I have always wondered how different Tom Riddle was from Voldemort. I still do not know. Know this: like as not, Lord Voldemort had Tom Riddle under his control and is using him to fool all of you.

This time, you must convince Hermione. Do not trust just this letter to do the job; you must find proof.

P.S. She is still wet and covered with blood, you idiot. Provide her with a cleaning spell.

"Well?" said Tom, impatiently grabbing a corner of the letter. "What does it say?"


	35. Chapter 35

REVIEWERS! Thanks for sticking with this fic for SO LONG. It's been years! Well, I've found out I am actually capable of writing something novel length, so I can get for serious on my actual novel now. So, Marisa1, thank you, yeah I don't really let any threads dangle if I can help it, so I'm sure once you saw that "Dear Myself" chapters and chapters ago, your spider senses were tingling. It's actually really hard to make sure there's no loose ends, there probably still are some in this fic. Just so you know, Alicia's warning will come up in the next fic, not this one. Ankoku Dezaia—is that Japanese for something? Let me know, seriously. Is it some hot anime or something? I can't really answer so very many questions about the D/Hr vs. Hr/T without giving away the sequel, so, wait and see I guess! Waterytart—thank you. I have been working on the suspense aspect. Blindfaithoperadiva—yeah, I thought that line was funny myself. Terrible timing for humor, what with the seriousness, but ahh, well. Web Walker—I was so confused until I realized you were reviewing Chapter 16. Hope you've made it to the END. I can't believe I've finally finished. And since this is the last chapter, this is the last chance for you lurking lurkers to gimme some of that feedback love. Or feedback hate, I can take criticism on fanfic. Seriously, I'd love to know what everyone thought, the good, bad, and ugly. Especially after this chap. There's an author's note at the end of this fic, too. You'll see why. Also, don't read this at work, mmkay?

Toodles until the sequel (add me to favorite authors to get automatic updates, or look for it under the Hr/T pairing, since only lets you pick one pairing—it's called The Other Hermione)

………………………………………(((((0)))))……………………………………….

Earlier…

There was a light. It was in the upper left-hand corner of the room. It was a golden light, pulsing, and she reached for it. But when her hand enclosed around it, the light turned into a sticky yellow ball. Candy. She put it in her mouth and looked up.

Hermione woke up before she saw who it was she had been looking up to, who in her dream had just spoken. Kindly. And everything suddenly evaporated, the seeming importance of the dream gone, the significance misremembered. Just a dream. It was just a dream.

October 2

"What is it? What does it say?" Tom repeated, his dark eyes flickering between the letter and her face.

Merlin.

"Mione--"

She looked up at Tom. There was no hiding the letter.

"What does it say? Give it here."

Hermione had no idea what her current expression must be. Her face felt numb. It was as though she was disconnected from her body. Tom started to reach for the letter, and thoughtlessly she shifted the paper entire to her wand hand, which currently was holding her wand—luckily, and then extended the letter, and underneath it her wand, handing it towards Tom. She had to keep Tom from seeing the letter, her real name, Harry's name, all of it. Already, he knew far too much. It would be fatal for him to see these particulars. What was it the letter had said? Put the future at risk for the sake of saving Tom Riddle from himself. The bald guilt of it weighed on her chest. And what she had said to herself, so many times, and believed, about the choice between Tom and her future.

"Petrimaximus," she said. Because she had to.

Tom fell, his fall preceded by barely a flash of surprise. He had no time to respond. He fell softly to the ground, his upper body upright over his collapsing knees, his arms breaking the rest of his fall accidentally. He came to rest on his side, half his face hidden from her.

"I told you, if given a choice between you and the world," Hermione whispered to his form, curled on the floor as if asleep. She couldn't finish the sentence. Her teeth were biting hard enough into her lip to draw blood. Lies. Liar. He'd been Voldemort all this time, he'd been using Tom Riddle's former identity to fool her, it had never been Tom himself—if there was a Tom himself. She shook her head and tried to see him with new eyes, but perspective cannot be changed so abruptly. His eyes were closed, and she tried to think of the times they had been red. A dry sob escaped her throat. "You bastard," she managed, before she pointed her wand at him to carry him towards their destination. He rose as if on a platform, only his clothes and hair obeying the gravitational pull.

She opened her door, peremptorily casting a disillusionment charm over Tom's levitating body. That first kiss, after they'd met in the Forest—that had been real. She closed her eyes remembering it. That was real. She wasn't sure if it made it better or not. And in the Shrieking Shack—that's why Voldemort knew he could use it as a tactic, because Tom Riddle actually had been infatuated with her.

It _was_ better. It was better than the thought she'd immediately leapt to, that the entire seduction was a design. That she was so easily fooled. But all the other times, the kisses, the caresses, all the times they'd spent in bed—it had been with Voldemort. She shuddered, and couldn't help reviewing every instance of intimacy. "I am an utter fool," she muttered angrily as she went through the Ravenclaw entrance.

What could she possibly have been thinking? To begin with, when had she ever let desire so overrun everything she knew to be right? She had cheated on Ron—given him up entirely, she had put her future, all the people she knew, the entire fate of the world, at risk. She had made love to Lord Voldemort. Bad enough Tom Riddle, even if he was—

Her breath caught in her throat. He was. He was innocent. He had been possessed by his own creation, he had created a tragedy he didn't intend. That much was still true. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Hermione quickened her steps along the corridor towards the staircase. There was still time. Oh, what there was of Tom was a scrap of what she'd thought him to be, but it was still, he was still—or was he? She began to descend. It wasn't Tom Riddle, necessarily, who'd discovered what he would come to do, and recoiled from it. It was Voldemort, and after that a still-possessed Tom, who knew. Hermione couldn't presume that her Tom, the one who had kissed her first, would have the same reaction, was the same person as the Tom she now knew to be a fake. Everything, in fact, that had redeemed him in her eyes had occurred after the possession.

The thread of hope vanished, and Hermione stared ahead of her, waiting for her staircase to meet another one that was veering towards it. Still, there were simple bits of information—that he meant to kill Malfoy with the snake, not mudbloods, that he was indifferent to rather than prejudiced against muggles and their magical spawn, that he didn't kill his family.

Did he? Hermione frowned. All the evidence did point to Tom's uncle. This time. Even if he'd done it the first time around according to Dumbledore's letter, he might not have this time. Or was it exactly the same this time around? Was it doomed to be the same as the last time, exactly the same, ending with her death and two Voldemorts? No, there were the stars. The stars had moved; they were the evidence that she had defeated determinism, that she still could save the future, even if she couldn't save Tom.

She was nearly to Dumbledore's office. Her pace had accelerated to a near run, and she was breathless when she reached the door. She rapped on the door hard and didn't stop until it opened. It was a while before the door was answered, and when it was Professor Dumbledore was wearing a purple and yellow spangled nightcap in place of his usual hat.

He yawned as he spoke. "Miss Granger, it's rather late. Has something come up?"

Hermione looked distractedly over to where Tom was floating and realized he was still invisible. She finited the disillusionment spell impatiently and searched in her robes. Her fingers closed around the incriminating letter. "Here," she said, her voice thick. "The letter."

Dumbledore's eyes changed rapidly. He blinked twice and they lost all their pleasantness and Hermione saw the expression for the mask it was. Underneath was worry and weariness. "I see. The letter. How did you come by it?"

"Tom," she managed. "It's true?" She could see the answer in her eyes and she could feel the heat in her face that preceeded hysterics. She furiously blinked back tears.

Dumbledore went over to his desk, stooping as he rifled through the contents of a drawer. After a few moments, he produced the diary. There was no puncture to be seen in it. It was as if new. It was the final bit of proof. Hermione stared at it in heated disbelief.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Granger. Hermione."

"His family?" she asked, a sob cutting the word "family" into two uneven sections.

Professor Dumbledore sighed. "I was asked to examine Mr. Gaunt's mind after he was apprehended. I'm afraid it showed signs of having been tampered with." He looked away from her for a moment, to his bookshelf, which contained his Pensieve. "It was only tonight. Just as in your time, the murder remains unsolved, although I have my suspicions."

"But time's changed now, isn't it? Isn't it?" she demanded, and without letting Dumbledore answer her she said. "Something's different this time, that's why the stars have moved. You didn't convince me the last time, it said in your letter. I went with him in good faith and you let me because you believed him, and this time you didn't, and he's unconscious, and you can give him the Draught of the Living Death and I'll bring him back and find Harry and—"

"Yes," said Dumbledore in a way that made her stop. He spoke softly, and he eyes were kind. "There is hope."

Tears broke out without her being able to help it. She hated that she was crying over him, over a lie, over a farce. "And—Tom?" she managed. Not the one she was crying over. The one that might have been.

"Hermione, _there is no time_."

"What are you talking about? We have a sodding time machine."

"And you only have until midnight to use it. That gives us two and a half hours. Tom knows I know—rather, Lord Voldemort knows. That is why he has feigned suspicion and forced your hand. Don't you see? If you postpone this at all, he will get control of Tom, even stunned, even under any potion or draught. No poison will kill him, no magical curse will take effect for long, while he is under the influence of the Sorcerer's Stone.

Hermione sat down on the floor. So that was it. She was to return to her time having nearly sacrificed it over her foolishness, to a time when her other self would never need to go back in time, to where there would be another her, and she would still have lost Ron and Harry. It didn't bear any more thinking. None at all. "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it," she said heavily.

"The Sorcerer's Stone must be imbibed monthly to have an effect. The first thing we must do is rid Tom—Voldemort, really, of his immortality."

"How do we do that?"

"The time machine, of course. I have already programmed a sub-command underneath the dates you put into it. After we give Tom Draught of the Living Death, we can put him into the Time Machine and program it to age him a month. Just enough to turn him into a mortal again. He shouldn't be aware of the change—you'll have that to your advantage should he resume consciousness."

Hermione was surprised at the readiness of his answer. But, after all, he was Dumbledore. And thank Merlin for that, since she was out of ideas for once in her life. So she just nodded. "Can you take him? I don't want to look at him anymore."

There was a silence, and when Hermione looked up she could she him looking down at her sadly. "I should have given you the letter right away. I'm so sorry."

"I'm sure he would have found a way no matter what. I've just been incredibly stupid. It doesn't matter. All that matters is the future." She angrily brushed away her tears, which wouldn't stop coming, and stood. "We should go."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, so softly she barely heard it. She was already out the door. She didn't look behind her. She thought of her satchel, with everything inside of it, and couldn't bring herself to fetch it. Tom's rucksack was in her room, too. Voldemort's, she corrected herself. She just walked to the entrance, and through it, and left Hogwarts behind, and walked towards the Forest. She could hear Dumbledore behind her, could hear the sound he made walking through the underbrush. When they reached the Time Machine, Hermione sat down again and watched as Dumbledore guided Tom's floating form into the Time Machine. She closed her eyes while he made the adjustments and tried to clear her head of the white noise that was suddenly filling it. He'd said he was in love with her—but hadn't she always been suspicious, just a bit, underneath everything? It didn't help. Nothing was going to help. Hermione understood suddenly that nothing was going to be all right ever again. This wasn't like after she'd killed Bellatrix. There would be no Harry waiting to comfort her, no Ron to kiss her. She could never tell anyone about this.

Somehow, this cleared her head of the white noise and her eyes of tears. She was seized with a new fatalism. She wasn't afraid of death. She simply had to complete her mission. Go to the room of the Questing Beast, hand Tom over to Harry. When he died, that would be the end, that would be all that was necessary. Whatever came after that didn't matter.

"Are you ready?" asked Dumbledore.

Hermione opened her eyes. Dumbledore pulled a lever of the Time Machine and she watched Tom disappear into time. She knew that when he returned he would be awake, that he would be conscious and conscious of her betrayal, even if it was Voldemort, even if her betrayal was insignificant in comparison to his. She didn't want to look at him, but she knew she would have to, before she or Dumbledore could deliver another stunning spell. She prayed that it would be Voldemort, not Tom, looking through his eyes when he returned. Dumbledore looked up from his watch. "Soon," he said, and in only a few breaths he was right.

He was conscious, only just, and looked out of the Time Machine at Dumbledore and Hermione in confusion. Very quickly it turned to sudden comprehension. Just as quickly, Dumbledore extended his wand and aimed a wordless spell at Tom. He was unconscious again. Safe, relatively.

She rose and looked at Professor Dumbledore, who nodded at her. Then Hermione, as she had months ago, entered the Time Machine. This time she wasn't alone.

Hermione felt something cold and dull crawling inside of her, covering her from the inside. It numbed her, gave her a semblance of strength. She managed to lift her eyes to Dumbledore's as she stood in the time machine over Tom's now mortal body. And then, like snowflakes, pieces of information began to fall into place. The future version of Dumbledore had told his younger self that she and Tom had gone to an earlier time than their previous plan, the one they were headed to now—he told himself that he had discovered them where Harry was being kept—but how could he know where Harry was being kept and not think to warn himself of it? Why hadn't he rescued Harry then? Tom couldn't have been responsible for that house-elf disguised as his uncle, and if he wasn't, how could he know his uncle was free to be framed? How had Dumbledore known they were leaving earlier even than their second plan, that Tom had forced her hand? Dumbledore hadn't given her that letter; by all appearances, it was meant to be given to her in the morning. She and Tom would have already been gone by then; she's never have received it if Tom hadn't given her that letter—and why would he, if he was Voldemort? Hermione reviewed Dumbledore's responses—his readiness to believe in Tom. The Dumbledore she knew wasn't a good actor. Things just didn't add up.

Hermione remembered her and Harry's conversation underneath that tree. Dumbledore willing to give up Harry's life to win the war. And-- "It's weird," Harry had said, after the TriWizard Tournament, before school had let out. "When I told him that Voldemort had touched me, he looked—happy. Like he'd just won a really complicated Wizard's chess game."

The swiveling of the bars of the Time Machine blurred, obscured, and then masked the Forbidden Forest. And Dumbledore alongside.

Tom was right. It was Dumbledore. She turned her mind towards seven years of his presence, his manipulation—handing Harry over to guardians he knew to be abusive, his utter lack of help, the yearly presence of adventures, during which he so often seemed to disappear. His happiness that Voldemort could touch Harry. His willingness to sacrifice Harry. His willingness to sacrifice Tom.

The only thing that saved her was that she didn't come to her realization until she'd gotten away. Hermione kneeled as the swirling bars of the Time Machine swiveled to a halt. She touched her wand to Tom's forehead. Before waking him, she used Legilimens, just to be sure. She knew what Voldemort looked like. What she saw wasn't what she had seen the night he'd tried to take over Tom. Not even a droplet of that angry red haze remained. She only saw Tom.

She closed her eyes, blinked away the last of her tears, and said "Ennervate." She suppressed a mild panic when he didn't immediately awake. She put her fingers to his neck and felt his pulse. His throat vibrated as he groaned and rolled over. His eyes opened. They were red, blood red, and they were bleeding. He stared as if he were blind; or perhaps Hermione couldn't see just where they were focusing. "Tom?" she whispered.

"…you going to kill me after all?" he croaked.

"No, Tom. I don't think so." She waved her wand over him, recalling that day in the forest when she had been shot by the centaurs, when she had nearly died. Some part of her had heard what Tom had said, had corresponded it to something she had come across in her studies, and she had mostly learned it. She didn't like to perform spells unless she was sure of them, but she would do her best. She waved her wand around Tom's eyes and started to mumble the incantation.

"Dumbledore," said Tom. "Fucking Dumbledore."

"He restored the diary?"

"Oh, he did, did he?"

"When could he have?"

"After I gave it to him—today. And don't ask me if I'm possessed because I haven't looked in it at all. I saw that it was punctured and brought it to Dumbledore. And then, presumably, he restored it. Or put some fucking impenetrable glamour on it to convince you to kill me. Which he almost did."

"Yes," said Hermione softly. "But he didn't." Then she returned to the incantation. The red receded slowly from Tom's eyes. He closed them and sat up gingerly.

"Well," he said. "Thank you."

"I'm so sorry."

He opened his eyes, black again and healed. "I still love you."

"I love you too."

"Let's go find Voldemort and kill him."

Hermione smiled tentatively and kissed him. He kissed her back. "I guess," she said hesitantly, "It's back to the original plan. Only—only I didn't bring any of our things."

Tom looked at her for a long moment. "Why not? Even if you meant to kill me—"

"I'm already here. Another me, that is. I couldn't have just gone back to my old life. And I couldn't go to the life we planned. I didn't know what I was going to do, I just wanted to get it over with quickly. I wasn't thinking about…" She stared at the floor of the Time Machine. "Merlin, I almost did it, too."

Tom stood and held a hand out. "You didn't, though."

Hermione accepted the hand and stood up. "What are we going to do now?"

"After we kill me?"

"Yes."

"We're magic, Mione. I'm sure we'll find a way."

She smiled, and they stepped out of the Time Machine. Tom was the last to leave, and as soon as he stepped out of its entrance, the Time Machine vanished. Hermione looked at the spot where it had been. "No need for me to go back now."

"There's no way for you to, either." Tom looked around him, at the forest, at the sky. "So this is the future."

"It is."

"It doesn't seem so very different from the past."

"Perhaps it's not." Hermione began to walk down the path. The Forest sounded much the same as it ever did, and ever so different from the night she'd left her own time. There was no battle being waged on the grounds of Hogwarts. Harry had only been missing a few days, and she prayed that those days hadn't been too horrible. Her stride became more purposeful.

When they broke through the clearing all was silent. The lights in the school were out. Everyone was asleep—including Ron and herself. She tried to remember this night, but the first week of Harry's disappearance had been a blur. Soon it wouldn't matter anyway. Soon Hogwarts, and Ron, and Harry, wouldn't be a part of her life anymore. Or Hogsmeade weekends, or Albion University, or vacations at the Burrow, even Diagon Alley was closed to her. They were nearly at the door.

"Mione," said Tom, stopping her before they went in.

"Yes?"

"What's your real name?"

She smiled a little, looking down at the corridor floor, saying goodbye to her Hogwarts, the friends she had yet to save. In her new life, Tom would know her real name, and her friends would never know she existed. They would have their Hermione, after all. She would have no reason to go back. She looked up at him. "Hermione," she said. "Hermione Granger." And suddenly for no reason at all she felt like a large part of who she had been came back to her. And the smile on Tom's face made her smile, made her believe in his future, in breaking boundaries, in doing impossible things.

"Hermione," he whispered. "Well, let's go and find Voldemort." He clasped her hand in his and they opened the door together.

"Harry—now!"

"Avada Kedaveda!"

There was a flash of green light, and Tom fell, his last smile fading into nothingness on his face.

"Hermione!" it was Harry. He looked utterly flabbergasted. Hermione looked up at him in disbelief. Dumbledore was behind him. He knew. He knew it all. It had never been Voldemort. It was him. And Tom was dead. She looked down at him. A month, gone. All that was needed to nullify the effects of the Sorcerer's. Tom never even knew what had been taken from him. Not that it mattered, now. Tom's eyes were still open, but they couldn't see anything any more. And it was very likely that it was written all over her face for Dumbledore to see, when Harry didn't even know what she'd come from.

Harry stepped over to her and she wondered if he saved her life doing that, blocking her from Dumbledore. He looked at her, took her chin and scrutinized her eyes, and then he guessed, the way an old friend will do, in that incomprehensible way: "You went back in time?"

She caught what she was about to say in her mouth and choked on an unexpected sob. Tom was dead—she still couldn't believe it, literally. But she couldn't think about it with Dumbledore just standing there like that. What—Merlin's beard, what possible story could be hidden from her that would explain this? How could he do it, how could someone who would do this seem so consummately kind?

"Sometimes even poisons taste sweet," said Professor Dumbledore.

Harry started, a confused and wary look in his eyes. "What exactly is going on here?"

The dream came back to her—that yellow light that turned into candy. The lemondrops, she thought, and Dumbledore needed no legilemency to see that she knew. She was dead. Tom was dead. She couldn't let Harry die, or Dumbledore live. "Harry—" she said, and her voice gave out as quickly as she said his name. A silent Silencio from Dumbledore.

He looked from the panicked expression on her face to Dumbledore, and back again. Made the connection in spite, or because of the silencing spell Professor Dumbledore had put on her.

"Poisoned me," she mouthed.

He was so quick. If she hadn't seen it before, three times, she wouldn't have believed it. The power, the exaggeration in everything he did. He turned around quickly and Dumbledore hadn't expected him to be quick enough to make the guess Hermione needed him to make. He hadn't known how surprised Harry was that he had found him, after a few days in his prison. And then the prison had turned out to be in the school, and Dumbledore was instructing him to make a confrontation with Lord Voldemort. Something had seemed wrong, and then he saw Hermione, and she looked so different now, thin and even a little taller, still small, hair a dark and complicated cloud, eyes a hundred years old—and gold. He knew the way very old friends know what you most need them to know. He knew Dumbledore was—was not who he'd thought he was.

For the second time that night Harry uttered the Killing Curse.

When it hit him, Dumbledore looked surprised. There was still a kindly look to his face—he'd never lost it, in fact. The silencing spell was broken.

"Oh, Merlin, Hermione. What happened?"

She shook her head. "He was good—it was the diary. And the lemondrops, Dumbledore poisoned me, he got Tom to kill Grindelwald same as he got you to kill Voldemort, I, he—" She bit her lip. "I'm going to die."

Already she could feel the effect of the poison. A weakening. She sat down and Harry sat with her. "I thought something was funny," he said.

"Thank Merlin you did." She looked at Tom. Much good it did him. She shook her head.

"We've got to get you to Madame Pomfrey's."

"No, Harry." She sighed. "I want to die."

"Hermione, no. I don't care what happened—" already he was propping her up. "I'm not letting you die."

"It's not really me, Harry. I mean, I'm already here. You won't really lose me. I have no place here. I've finished—" she looked again at Tom—"everything that could be finished." She wasn't crying. Odd. She didn't even feel sad. After all, she'd be with him soon enough.

Harry was crying, though. "Hermione, I don't understand a damn thing you're saying."

"Dolcenecronax," she whispered as she felt the strength continue to drain from her. "It begins to work when the poisoner spells it to begin its work. There's no pain. It's incurable. It's sweet."

"Hermione, no. No, I'm taking you—"

"Just stay here with me, Harry."

He was sobbing now. Poor boy. His parents gone, longer than hers ever were, that house he'd grown up in, everything he'd faced so far. And now this.

"Was it bad? Where you were?"

"No one hurt me or anything. I guess since it was Dumbledore after all."

"The room of the Questing Beast."

"Is that what it was? It was in the Slytherin Dungeons."

"Do you remember how to get there?"

"Yes." He bit his lip. "Why?"

"Bring me there. It was really Ravenclaw's room, not Slytherin's. Do you know I'm descended from her?"

Harry didn't respond. She supposed he must think she was going crazy. She'd never felt more clarity in her life.

"I know I'm muggleborn, but if you go far back enough… Anyways, the Grail is there—the one from all the tales of King Arthur. That's what made him immortal. Voldemort. It doesn't matter now, he's dead now that we killed his younger self. You won't be able to get it, you're not purely muggleborn. Merlin knows how you got in before. Just—press my hand to the wall, it will let me in. Even when I'm dead, I suppose."

A long silence stretched between them. Harry was struggling to compose his sobs. "Hermione, I love you, you've been like a sister to me—"

"I know, Harry. And Ron's still alive." Her words were already slurring. There wasn't much time left. "So I saved you after all." She smiled, and beautifully. She couldn't help but be happy, for all the people that lived now, for the fact that she had seen the war end, for the certainty she had before she went. She looked up at Harry, and his sad smile was almost the last thing she saw. "Don't tell anyone," she whispered, and she went. Her eyes didn't close. They remained open, like she was looking at something.

Harry did as she asked, and brought her to the room he had been imprisoned in for nearly a week. Which, in another world, in another time, had imprisoned him for months. He would have thought of that world, waiting for him, with Ron—and Hermione (a baffling idea)—and Ginny and the rest. He had been thinking of that world all the time of his imprisonment. But all he could think about now was Tom Riddle, and Voldemort, and Dumbledore, and Hermione. How Hermione had cried over Tom's body. Dumbledore's betrayal. The utter lack of Voldemort in any of the last act of his life. What had happened, those fifty years ago? He would never know, just as the world would never know what to make of the young boy lying dead near Professor Dumbledore, and his connection to the finally dead Voldemort, hundreds of kilometers away in Albania. No one asked about Hermione. After all, she was still there.

.((0)).

Though you may regain them, you have still lost them. You will lose more, little foal. Let yourself go on. For you will do what you mean to do, accomplish every last bit that you hope to. You must remember this. Your sacrifice will be worth it.

.((0)).

Fifty years ago, the diary was restored, and the grail was unlocked from its hiding place. Dumbledore had been successful at least in arranging these things, unaware as he was of his future failure. He had taken away the boy's sorcerer's stone. And the boy would have his companion again, that erstwhile avatar in his restored diary, to turn to for comfort and guidance. Of a sort. Everything was settled to go forward as planned. He had set up a Dark Lord to rise and fall in order to practice his own anonymous ascension, in order to practice the power he would gain in fifty years, in order to secure an untrammeled victory.

The diary would give Tom strength, and Tom's memory would provide the path to his downfall. Because the Tom that awoke in the Hospital Wing of Hogwarts in 1945 remembered everything—or almost. He remembered everything up until his disappearance with Mione in the Time Machine. He would nurse his grudge with his Slytherin friends, with Alicia, would come back to England because he was so sure the gates the Faer Land were there. He would remember Mione Potter, would look for her, would wait fifty years and come back from death and remember her. Remember her betrayal, remember she had chosen to be sure over letting him live. He would remember everything. Tom might know he would die, but he also knew that things could be changed, even the stars, even the future.

He would never know it was Hermione Granger, had never considered Gryffindor or Harry's friends. Surely she couldn't have been friends with this talentless boy like a stone in his shoe. After all, until they'd gone to the future, Mione Potter had never said Harry's name in Tom Riddle's presence. Or her own.

He would keep it a secret from Dumbledore, his memories, never knowing it was Dumbledore who ensured he keep them, who had preserved them just before he placed Tom in the Time Machine, who implanted them in the boy the Are Dlog created. After all, how else was the boy to have an incentive towards darkness, and such a profound disbelief in love? The diary could only do so much. There had to be another reason for him to twist so drastically into evil. What had betrayed him, was goodness itself.

They always said, in the wizarding world, while speaking in hushed tones of the Dark Lord, that Professor Dumbledore was the only wizard Lord Voldemort had ever feared. They just never knew why.

.((0)).

It was a cool, crisp autumn day. Somewhere, far away but close enough for you to smell it, leaves were burning. The wind carried their ashes away from their graves. The sunlight divided the sky into flat curtains. It was the golden hour, when the sun was a mask and painted long shadows onto the ground.

The grounds were still green, even if the grass was brittle, and they were covered with leaves just beginning to brown. Two figures crossed the field, one with red hair close to the color of some of the leaves, another with curly, dark hair. They were close together as they walked, almost as if clasping hands. They weren't. What had opened between them was too new for that. They had no extraordinary love, no passion that would change the heavens. They had what many have—affection, and love, that would wax and wane like an irregular moon. They would fight and tease and hurt each other's feelings, and they would love and trust each other and help to heal the old hurts inside them. They were not perfect, only ordinary, and that was more a comfort to them than any grand passion can be.

They would never know the price that had been paid for their love. They had their whole lives ahead of them.

…………………………………..(((((0)))))……………………………………….

Author's note: don't be mad at me, pretty please? This was a tragedy from the day I started writing it. I love a good sob story, y'know? And there is a sequel and that means YES THERE IS STILL HOPE. If you doubt, read Ravenclaw's note again. So, yeah, I hope I didn't give too much away by saying don't read this at work, I just didn't want you to get teary at your cubicles or whatever—not that this story is that great and all. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it even if you're sad about how it ended. And like I said, there is a sequel.


End file.
